This work explores the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, with Anna Skaldmann's distinct and innovative photography scanning method.

The story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden is one of the best-known narratives in the Western world and in the artist's view is also one of the most frequently misquoted, misremembered and mistranslated. "The story is rich, replete with symbolism, symmetry, sex, contradiction – as rich as the garden gifted to the first human beings. Ripe as a nearly-fallen fruit, the tale is attended by sociocultural impositions and assumptions, apocrypha and additions."

Anna uses a high-powered scanner to capture leaves, flowers and tropical fruits. Included in this floral cacophony are Diospyros Kaki one of the world's oldest cultivated plants, having been in use in China for more than 2000 years. 

Each fruit offers an alternative to the familiar forbidden apple, hinting at the limits of taxonomy in a constantly evolving world. Although all the fruits are edible, many of the other plants in the images are not; the images are simultaneously seductive and poisonous in appearance, suggesting contradictory responses to desire.

Anna Skladmann’s artistic medium combines photography and scanning techniques to reflect critically on aspects of contemporary life and politics exploring notions of nature and society, cultivation and the machine. She is interested in the archive and categories produced and re- produced as well as being embedded in literature and mythology.

Accolades

Anna Skladmann has an MA from the Royal College of Art and a BA from Parsons School Of Design. Her work has been nominated for the Prix Pictet and Paul Huf Award, and has also won the Arles Photo Folio Prize. Skladmann published her first monograph in 2011 and her photographic projects have been shown in exhibitions and festivals, including the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, Fotofest International in Houston, Unseen Photo Fair in Amsterdam and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg.

Permanent Collections include The Maramotti Collection, The Museum Of Fine Arts Houston, The Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Stiftung für die Hamburger Kunstsammlung and The Pinault Collection.