Photo Fringe 2022

Callum and Kai are a young couple living on the protest site, Maple Farm, on Preston New Road – near to the site of the UK's first operational Fracking site, run by Cuadrilla. They were photographed outside of their tent, in a blustery November. The pair have been living on site together for a number of months, monitoring the comings and goings of vehicles and equipment into the fracking site. They strongly believe that fracking will bring destruction to our landscapes and future, and that we should be moving away from our reliance on fossil fuels, and they are willing to be arrested and give up their freedom for the cause. This image was shot on Kodak Portra film and the film negative material was soaked in local brook water – that included runoff from Cuadrilla’s site – and, a purposeful mixture of local tap water and polyacrylamide (the main constituent in “fracking fluid“ that secretes the known carcinogen, acrylamide) were used, resulting in lurid and unnatural colour shifts.

Rhiannon Adam's long-term projects straddle art photography and social documentary, while subject matter is often focused on narratives relating to myth, loneliness, and the passage of time, particularly in relation to isolated or marginalised communities. The results of these explorations often employ experimental analogue methodologies and archive materials to reveal hidden narratives.

Fracking, being a largely invisible fossil fuel extraction process (where drilling takes place underground) is difficult to capture photographically. To manifest the invisible dangers of water contamination caused by seismic disruption, rolls of film were purposefully soaked in contaminated water (containing site runoff and fracking fluid) prior and during processing, resulting in lurid and unnatural colour shifts. These deviations and imperfections are a representation of what the reality of water contamination could look like, making the invisible, visible – nature corrupted, faces and bodies consumed by damage. These alchemical results allude to the fragility of life, and are as unpredictable as the future itself.

Rhiannon Adam was born in Cork, Ireland, before spending her formative years sailing around the world on a boat with her parents. She now lives and works in London. Her long-term projects straddle art photography and social documentary, while subject matter is often focused on narratives relating to myth, loneliness, and the passage of time, particularly in relation to isolated communities, or those battling societal injustice. In April 2019 she was named as a winner of The Photographers’ Gallery’s inaugural New Talent award, and in 2020, she was awarded the Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography. She is the author of Polaroid: The Missing Manual, and Big Fence / Pitcairn Island.

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Photo Fringe invited artists to propose a single image to engage audiences and help us imagine a greener, fairer world. Artists were asked to respond to the question “How can photography make a difference to the climate crisis?"

The resulting outdoor exhibition of selected images by twenty artists can be found on Worthing seafront until the end of April 2023.

Sponsored by Metro Imaging Ltd with funding from Arts Council England National Lottery Project Fund and Worthing Borough Council.