Born in Glasgow in 1961, Calum Colvin was a winner of one of the first Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Awards and is a holder of a Royal Photographic Society Gold Medal. He is Professor Fine Art Photography at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.

Colvin has said of Minotaur: I wanted to make a pair of images where the presentation of the self-portrait in different forms would be explored. I liked the idea of presenting a self-portrait in profile, like a Victorian silhouette cut-out, which would be repeated in different guises through both images. The allusion to the Minotaur and the labyrinth offered a framework for a narrative, where the various fractured elements of a persona (references to national identity, the Scots diaspora, childhood, masculinity etc.) are threaded through the debris of the labyrinth to present a more mysterious form of portraiture. The right hand print of the diptych is a twilight, half destroyed version of the left hand panel.