A Moment in Time of Timelessness
So frequently preppers, homesteaders, and survivalists are depicted as doomsday zombie-crazed psychos, but the reality is that this quiet life is beautiful in its rustic simplicity.
French photographer, Antoine Bruy, set out to capture that beauty. From 2010 to 2013, Bruy lived with several off-the-grid families in Europe’s majestic mountain rages and countrysides photo documenting theirs lives to promote and show a deeper understanding of those who choose a way of life that creates “greater energy, food, economic, or social automony,” to use his words. He calls this body of work, Scrublands.
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In Bruy’s series Scrublands, he documented the homes and faces of the people he countered, by chance, who live far away from civilization. Living with these individuals for days to weeks at a time, Antoine helped them farm land and raise livestock while becoming educated on their self-sufficient lifestyles. Once teachers, students, and engineers, these people now rely on makeshift buildings, recovered materials, and agriculture in order to survive off-grid.
The compelling photos capture the rustic beauty and idyllic setting of people who have chosen a Walden-esque existence tucked away in secluded, wild environments. “The people and places depicted in my pictures display various fates which I think should not only be seen at a political level, but more importantly, as daily and immediate experiences,” he explains. “These are, in some ways, spontaneous responses to the societies these men and women have left behind. This documentary project is an attempt to make a kind of contemporary tale and to give back a little bit of magic to our modern civilization.”
–The Mind Unleashed
Photo Credits: Antoine Bruy
Sources: The New Yorker, Mind Unleashed