Hanson’s Tent at the Common Ground Fair, Unity, Maine, 2008

"This image was captured in central Maine at the Common Ground Fair, where many of the families I have been following gather every year to sell their organic produce and hand-made goods. With many of the families living miles from their nearest neighbor (including the Hansons, who have a cabin in the forest land close to the Canadian border), the fair is one of the few communal events uniting the Maine off-gridders. This tent, like so many of the temporary and permanent structures I've photographed, is completely idiosyncratic and reveals the character of the people who constructed it."

—Keliy Anderson-Staley

This limited-edition photograph by Keliy Anderson-Staley, from her series Off the Grid, evokes a sort of survivalist Dada—part log cabin and part Merzbau—and is a testament to the lives and values of the people who built it.

Rooted in personal experience, these photographs are part of an ongoing project documenting the lives of several families who have—for political, economic, religious, or environmental reasons—chosen to make their homes in the Maine woods. Blending a documentary approach with a topographic style, architectural interiors and exteriors accompany nuanced portraits to provide a fresh look at a lifestyle that is as progressive as it is atavistic.

Archival Digital C-Print
Paper Size: 16 x 20 inches
Image Size: 13 7/8 x 18 1/2 inches
Edition of 25 and 4 Artist’s Proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist

Keliy Anderson-Staley (b. 1977, Massachusetts) received a BA from Hampshire College and MFA from Hunter College in New York in 2006. In 2008, she was awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Photography Fellowship. Anderson-Staley has had major solo exhibitions, including at the Morris Museum of Art, the Society for Photographic Education in Cleveland, the Southeast Museum of Photography, and the University of Maine Museum of Art. Her photographs are in public and private collections such as the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art; the Library of Congress; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Portland Museum of Art. Anderson-Staley has featured her work in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Boston Globe, Photo District News, Photograph, Art New England, Camerawork, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her book of tintype portraits, On a Wet Bough, was published by Waltz Books in 2014. Anderson-Staley is currently an Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media at the University of Houston.