Masquerade is a large-scale tableaux vivant which draws on a style of painting called Academicism. The photographically constructed scene is inspired by Jean-Léon Gérôme’s painting ‘The Duel after the Masquerade’, 1857–1859 which is itself a version by Gérôme of an earlier work entitled ‘Suite d’un bal masque’, 1857. Hodgson’s work in essence, is a contemporary transcription - a third layer to the story composed via a completely different vehicle and presented to us through the medium of photography. The artist uses his camera to explore the narrative and theatrical nature of the works created centuries ago – constructing the sumptuous scene without losing any atmosphere of the original paintings – only when we look more closely do we see these young men dressed in clothes from the 21st century. The layering of oil paint has been replaced by the fusion of hatched imagery and the softness and saturated colour of pigment printing.