Out Of The Fire

As part of Photomonth Photography Festival 2015, and coinciding with Ladybird Books centenary, Oxford House presents Sara Hannant’s Out of the Fire. 

This beautiful and intriguing photographic installation re-enchants the power of fairy tales, as female characters from vintage Ladybird books are transformed through fire. The work reconsiders these iconic children’s books, opening up the narratives to reflect personal and cultural mythologies that bear a relationship to dreams, desires and memory.

Sara Hannant says, “The 1960s versions of fairy stories in Ladybird Books were hugely influential. Prompted to transform the images of female protagonists to tell a different story, I decided to use the unpredictable and exciting element of fire as an agent for change.  As the pages burn, alternative images and text are revealed or juxtaposed. New stories emerge out of the fire.”
Out of the Fire references storytelling around the fire, while drawing inspiration from the ancient art of pyromancy – telling the future through fire. Diviners would record and interpret the interactions of significant objects in the fire, making predictions from their observations, which were known as oracle stories.

Fire—a symbol of hearth and home, destruction, trial, purging and purification— is both contradictory and dramatic. Its popular associations overlap the religious, secular and political. Presenting the books engulfed in flames consequently provokes unease. Yet this apparent destruction may also suggest the return of the original archetypal folk tales concerning rites of maturity from childhood to adulthood.