On a recent trip to Utah, I discovered this off-the-grid community in the middle of the desert, a surreal world to the outsider, and a vibrant place with happiness to the residents: 15 families living right inside a massive wall of rock.
In my multiple conversations with locals while I scouted potential locations of interest, a few people started to mention this community of polygamists, my interest rapidly grew and I launched my investigation for a way to find them and how to gain access to their community.
After locating the community, I gained access through one of the sons of the very founder in the 1970s – Enoch is now the leading figure in this community. I had the privilege of being part of their lives for one day. Enoch at first hesitated, but I explained that my goal as a photographer for many of the projects I do for Humanitari is to simply portray the very vast different ways we humans live. I love showing how different and extraordinary we as a human race can be, and portraying how environment, social culture and beliefs make so many variants of us humans. I always explain how non-judgmental I like to be when photographing people’s worlds/lives. Enoch understood my plea and graciously offered for me to photograph for one day their unique lives.
In the photographs you will notice how unique their world is, but one thing in particular that inspired me so much (even though my life is vastly different from theirs) is how happy their children were all around – every house, in every corner of the community, I found kids with an enormous curiosity, either they were doing their homeschool time or playing in total joy. The families live in this tiny community that is not only in the middle of nowhere in the vast desert, but as well they live completely off-the-grid. Only solar power feeds their energy needs, which is aided by the unique surroundings: their houses are carved into the rock cliff wall towering above them, maintaining a solid temperature in winter or summer. Their water comes from an on-site well (which feeds impressive vegetable gardens) and they receive fresh local meat from neighboring farmers; the community’s way of life is extremely self-sufficient.
Enoch’s father, as Enoch explained, had a vision in the 1970’s: he moved his family to Utah where he purschaed land that included a vast rock wall you will see in the photos below. They then lived for years in trailers, until they started to carve into the massive rock; explosives made the soft rock crumble to make space for their first home which at the beginning was just a plastic separating the exterior from the interior. As years went by and the polygamist community grew, they statrted to build the houses you see today in the visuals, resulting today this surreal little town carved into the rock – a place truly within a location, a unique community living their beliefs and way of life.
One of Enoch’s wives showed me around – we visited several of the families, some just building or finishing up their new homes inside the rock, some just going about their everyday tasks, and many kids playing and learning life via another lens.
The pictures below are very rare and will introduce you into their world. As I say often, people grow in different ways and the most important is to reach their own happiness; though this disinct community is far from my way of life, what I did admire a lot was their certain reach for happiness and harmony.
Leandro Sanchez
