gardens as social spaces

A little while back I wrote about the Critical Mass photography awards. One of the “Top 50” photographers, Lucas Forest Foglia, had a series based on a community garden and the people who interact there.

Left: Lukas Forest Foglia: Savuth Watering [ source ]

The Great American Garden shares undertones with the Great American anything: competition, excess and individualism. Just look at all the battles for the greenest lawn that the Scott’s fertilizer people perpetuate in their ads that are about to start saturating the airwaves.

But community gardens allow something else to happen. They’re shared spaces and meeting places where people of differing backgrounds and cultures interact.

Foglia’s photos look at the varied people who work plots of land in a community garden in Providence, Rhode Island, and they celebrate the intersections that develop there. It’s a nice body of work and definitely worth a look.

Lessons

Left: Lukas Forest Foglia: Lessons, 2005 [ source ]

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