Video extract: Tom explains his working process 
Top: Tom Hunter, 'Woman reading a Possession Order', 1997.
Courtesy the artist and Jay Jopling/White Cube, London.
Bottom: Johannes Vermeer, 'A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window', about 1647-9.
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche. Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
This photograph first brought Tom Hunter to the public's attention in 1998 when he won the John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award.
It is one of a series of works, entitled 'Persons Unknown' that transplanted Vermeer's masterpieces from 17th-century Delft to 20th-century Hackney.
'Woman reading a Possession Order' is a direct reference to Vermeer's 'A Girl reading a Letter by an Open Window'. The photograph mimics the composition of the painting, with the woman seen in profile, illuminated by the light through a window.
Like the Vermeer painting, it also tells a story, but Hunter's narrative is from his own place and time.
The room is bleak, the mood mournful. The title suggests that the young mother is about to be evicted, and we are left to speculate about her situation. She is not a specific, named individual but is representative of a class of dispossessed people.
Hunter has copied the formal composition of Vermeer's picture and hung on to this his own story, as relevant to his own time as Vermeer's is to his.
