Born in 1967, Luc Gijbels studied Publicity and Graphic Design in Holland before starting his own publicity agency where he designed campaigns for various national and international brands. His work and love of travel took him to all corners of the planet during this period. In 2000 he sold his agency and moved to Portugal for a year in order to refresh and rethink his career. Here he painted, started to write stories and develop ideas for creative projects. Once back home he started a fashion production company, and it was a fashion shoot that first brought him to South Africa. Over the past 15 years, the country has became his second home.

To realise his “A Little Glow in the Dark” project, Luc spent seven intense weeks in Nyanga township in Cape Town. He used 60 kilometres of white knitting yarn and photographed 200 local children – with pieces of art, letters filled with dreams, slips of paper with messages or playful snippets of wisdom – to produce an arresting series of images designed to make us stop and think.

In the series Luc tells a story about life lines. He believes that every human being is born naked and slowly builds up what are about 200 meaningful connections with others throughout his or her life. Everyone has a personal ball of yarn that unwinds, and can’t be wound up again. Thick or thin, short or long, you don’t know when it will be over or what you leave behind. And as everyone unwinds, we all become entangled, literally strung together, connected in one way or the other. The project is ultimately a story about relationships. A story about mutual respect. A story about being intimately connected during this singular and spectacular journey we call life. A story about choices and dreams. And a story about what we leave behind when our yarn is unwound…