The spotlights are dim in Paul Hodgson’s studio, and time flows in reverse. While most photographers’ studios are places of floodlit backdrops and the semblance of novelty, Hodgson’s is more like the hidden quarters of the medium’s unconscious. His photographs excavate earlier imagery from all manner of sources, from unique Old Masters as much as photographs that have been reproduced a thousand times, and put them before us again as if they were fossils. If we recognize something in them, it is because the images are like echo chambers that allow us to hear the past reverberate in the present.

Paul Hodgson graduated from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2000 and has since fast gained attention for his large-scale photographs of theatrical tableaux vivants that often draw from the traditions of historical painting. He stages actors in period costume or contemporary clothing with operatic gesture, dramatic lighting and sparse settings against painted, photo or projected backdrops. Hodgson’s allegorical pictures subvert the traditions they represent and disrupt their own implied narrative with a highly ambiguous effect. By reinterpreting paintings from the past with the vernacular of current studio photography he nods to certain old masters, but updates their work with the signs of contemporary social life.