New World utopias: A photographic history of the search for community
by Paul Kagan
Category: Collective settlements

Here is a surprising photographic survey of communal life in the American West from 1870 to the present. Many of the nearly three hundred photographs assembled here have never before been published. Some were discovered by Paul Kagan among the remains of vanished communities. Others, taken by Kagan himself, depict the present-day ruins of once thriving communes. The communities that these photographs and the accompanying text bring so vividly to life include the political, the religious, and the occult - from Fountaingrove and Icaria Speranza to Pisgah Grande and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. All of them hold valuable lessons for the world of the future. As Paul Kagan writes: "Much of the life, and much of the story, is in the photographs. The photographs that I made represent my feelings about the communal remains, and the historical photographs show a little of the daily life of the groups. The accompanying text tells the communal history and, hopefully, raises some pertinent questions. The search for community is generally directed toward someplace 'over there.' Can the vision of the utopians be pursued here, in the context of life in the world?"