Ariadne’s Thread explores the labyrinthian relationship between the natural environment and human intervention in the landscape through environmental portraiture and temporary site-specific installations. The project title and the red colour used throughout the series reference the thread Ariadne gave Theseus in the original myth to navigate the Minotaur’s labyrinth. The work builds on feelings of fear, hope and bravery represented by the myth’s characters and explores the meetings and convergence of the organic and synthetic. The images invite us to contemplate the hybridisation of nature and culture, analogue and digital, fiction and reality and the physical and virtual world. The series asks us to consider how artificial man-made constructs and natural structures co-exist and share space, creating hybrid landscapes.
The notion of hybridity has also informed the project’s production which combines analogue and digital photographic processes and printing technologies. Originally photographed on 120 mm colour negative film using a Hasselblad camera, the images were scanned and digitally post-processed after development in a commercial film processing laboratory. Other than dust particle removal and digital colour correction, no digital manipulation was used. The resulting photographic objects intended for exhibition include life-size photographic prints on polyester canvas and digital C-type prints mounted and framed in plywood-covered aluminium frames. This production method and presentational strategy bring together various forms of photography, reinforcing the notions of hybridity, co-existence and convergence explored in project’s imagery.