In 2003 a sudden development of severe Environmental Illness forced Thilde Jensen to leave her life in New York City. The ensuing years were a lesson in basic survival. Retreating to the woods for sanctuary, Jensen would have to wear a respirator whenever she returned to civilization. To her surprise, an otherwise invisible subculture of people who shared this isolated existence began to emerge. She later travelled the desert of the American Southwest, where many with Environmental Illness live as refugees from a chemical and electrical world they can no longer inhabit.

The Canaries is an intimate journey through a hypersensitive dimension of reality, where old cars, aluminum foil, masks and home-made phones become key necessities for survival. The book is an authentic photographic documentation of life on the edge of modern civilization, but reads almost as fiction set in the borderland between dream and nightmare.