Lucas Foglia - Human Nature
2 February – 15 April 2018

Human Nature is a series of interconnected stories about nature, people, government, and the science of our relationship to wilderness. Lucas Foglia (b. 1983, US) deftly navigates the strange conceptual territory, where wild nature is both a quenching oasis and a shimmering mirage. His photographs show people gazing at nature, touching it, submerging themselves in it, studying it, nursing it, killing it, profiting off it, and, often just barely, surviving upon it.

Lucas Foglia grew up on a small family farm surrounded by forest, just outside New York City. The starting point for his latest project Human Nature is Hurricane Sandy. In 2012, this hurricane flooded his family’s fields and blew down the oldest trees in the woods. On the news, scientists linked the storm to climate change caused by human activity. Foglia realised that if humans are changing the weather, then there is no place on earth unaltered by people. Human Nature begins in cities and moves through forests, farms, deserts, ice fields, and oceans, towards wilderness. At a time when the average American spends 93% of their life indoors, Foglia photographed government programmes that connect people to nature, neuroscientists measuring how spending time in the wild benefits us; and climate scientists measuring how human activity is changing the air.

Lucas Foglia is a storyteller in the tradition of the great American photographers who show social commitment without losing sight of the aesthetics. His exhibition in Foam will show 35 large format works from Human Nature, plus an installation of books and images made in collaboration with the scientists he photographed. A monograph, published by Nazraeli Press (2017), will accompany the exhibition.

Foglia graduated with a MFA in Photography from Yale University and with a BA in Art Semiotics from Brown University. His work has been widely exhibited in the United States and in Europe. His prints are in collections including the Art Collection of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, Foam, International Center of Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Foglia was chosen as one of the Foam Talents for Foam Magazine in 2014. He lives and works in San Francisco. His earlier books, A Natural Order (Nazraeli Press, 2012) and Frontcountry (Nazraeli Press, 2014) were published to international critical acclaim. He is represented by Frederick & Freiser Gallery, New York, and Michael Hoppen Contemporary, London.

Opening
The exhibition opens in the presence of the artist on Thursday 1 February 2018. You are welcome from 5.30 pm onwards.

Artist talk
On Friday 2 February at 7pm Foam will present an Artist Talk with Lucas Foglia and curator Kim Knoppers about Human Nature.