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About the Work Origins The work was inspired by a snapshot of my goddaughter, which I keep in my study. It shows her, aged about seven, in her school dress and wearing a cardboard helmet, playing with a home made bow and arrow. Her arm extends the bow, ready to fire. Looking at it one day, it struck me that her pose was just like that of Diana in Titian’s painting “The Death of Actaeon” in the National Gallery. In her play, my goddaughter had innocently assumed the position of that stern goddess, taking her revenge on Actaeon, who, hunting in the forest, had glimpsed Diana and her nymphs bathing. The furious goddess turned him into a stag, hunted him down and watched as he was torn to pieces by his own hounds. The painting shows Diana wielding her bow, her arm outstretched towards the wounded Actaeon, his hounds leaping upon him. Tall and stately, her pale figure dominates the scene. I asked for another copy of the photograph to work from. Searching for it in the family album, I found it had been placed next to a snapshot of a deer. *** On holiday that summer in Connecticut, wild deer roamed through the grounds of my friend’s house. Early one morning I lay in wait to photograph them. Their beautiful silhouettes, captured against the mist shrouded trees as, startled by the noise of the camera shutter, they paused for a second to locate the source of the sound before leaping away, were like memory traces of a more ancient world. Returning home, I knew I had brought this ancient world back with me, and that somehow it still remained at the heart of our modern, everyday society. I determined to find a way to reveal it.