Twenty-five years ago, Don McCullin embarked on a journey to create a cultural and architectural survey of the remains of the Roman Empire. The previously unpublished photographs in The Roman Conceit focus on the marble sculptures of the heroes of antiquity preserved in museums in Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Libya, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the USA. McCullin has turned his attention from a fascination with the ruined cities of the Empire—exposed in big, broad landscapes under metallic skies—to the still and intimate close-ups of stone sculpture. For this collection of images, all created in recent years, he photographed after-hours, or before doors open to the public, in the museums; the statues, released from their context of time and place, are captured in black and white and in the hush and tranquillity of a space devoid of crowds. 'It is never as an academic, nor as a scholar, that I respond to these stone gods and goddesses, but as a respectful admirer. I hope to pay tribute, through my photography, to their iconic beauty, their marble perfection and their very existence, exhumed lovingly by archaeologists and brought to life after 2000 years of burial.'