I developed an interest in the idea of ex-pats; the writers, filmmakers and actors who spent time in Rome after World War II, when the city was nicknamed Hollywood on the Tiber. To this end I looked at Tennessee Williams, who spent lots of time in the city during the late 1940s and 1950s. His novella The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, which is about an ageing American actress who moves to Rome and the two subsequent films based on the book provided me with lots of imagery and some ideas about the city especially the idea of drifting.
I started taking photographs of portrait busts in various museums and galleries around the city including at The Capitoline Museum. I showed a series of 24 black and white portraits of women, a number of these were painted after historic portrait busts but some were taken from film imagery. I named the series Belladonna (for obvious reasons but also because it was the favoured medicine used by Tennessee Williams’ Mrs Stone).

— Cathy Lomax