Handmade Utopia

Half a century ago, young idealists dropped out of society and went “back to the land,” one of the largest urban-to-rural migrations in American history. Northern California became the movement’s epicenter, where utopian communes gave rise to radical, handbuilt, sometimes otherworldly homes. Handmade Utopia: Back-to-the-Land Architecture in Northern California traces those still committed to this way of life, capturing their buildings and the stories behind them at the tail end of a generation’s social experiment. Handmade Utopia travels through Northern California, along hidden dirt roads and into redwood forests, uncovering handmade homes concealed for decades. Schmelling’s photography documents these structures today, while Kramer’s oral histories with 38 back-to-the-landers recount how they came to be, complemented by archival materials, historical texts, and locally produced publications from the movement’s heyday.