Tom Hunter

Book excerpt: Tom Hunter is a London-based photographer of international renown for his engaging, distinctive, and often provocative re-creations of Old Master paintings. In 1998 he won the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award for A Woman Reading a Possession Order, a beautifully crafted photograph based on a composition by the Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675). Featuring selections of the bold images that established Hunter’s reputation, together with new work, this book conveys the artist’s deep concern with depicting the lives of the residents of Hackney, East London, as captured in the headlines of Hunter’s local newspaper, the Hackney Gazette. These startling, sometimes tragic, stories are retold in carefully staged photographs, whose compositions are frequently derived from paintings in the National Gallery. An essay by best-selling novelist Tracy Chevalier examines Hunter’s story-telling, while Colin Wiggins discusses the relationship between Hunter’s work and paintings in the National Gallery and elsewhere.