Mythologies

Rewriting myths, such as the stories of Medusa or of Adam and Eve, and choosing animals with strong symbolic connotations like snakes, cats and birds as the co-protagonists of her shots, Petrina Hicks’s photographs allude to the complexity of woman’s identity and the spiritual nature of her relationship with animals.

According to the photographer’s vision, animals are closer to the “divine” than humans because they exist in a state of pure awareness, and women are closer to animals because they are more capable of understanding that we exist in the same single continuum.

Framed within her shots, albino pythons wrap themselves around the wrists of diaphanous muses, snow-white barn owls soar through the air and cats with an evanescent glow cast magnetic glances into the lens. Alluding to a mythical dimension constantly evoked through references to classical antiquity, her images reveal an instinctual and magical dimension, a reality beyond the boundaries of the visible in which animals and humans reconnect and recognize their mutual individuality as they observe each other.