My concern about our human impact on the environment persuaded me to work with environmental conservation groups and so began the INTERFACE project. It was a photographic journey that took me across Europe and the Middle-East, to find different ways of visualising Nature and our connection and estrangement from it.
I shot the triptychs mainly on 35mm film and created a visual story, based on the conversations with each of the subjects. Sometimes I worked in layers; I would shoot the portrait then depending on our conversation, I would shoot texture elements. I then sandwich the negatives in the enlarger. I had to be careful with the exposure of each negative in order that the combined sandwich of negatives was not too dense and also the balance between portrait and texture was just right. To achieve this using analogue processes required a great deal of trial and error which nowadays is easily done digitally in photoshop.
Maythem Ridha
