Wild and exciting, the Greek god Pan induces both fear and awe; at times, he is dangerous, stirring panic and creating pandemonium. His name, coincidentally, means ‘all’.
Often depicted as a satyr, with the lower body and legs of a goat and a human torso and horned head, this half-man, half-goat represents a fusion of human, non-human and the divine. Pan was originally worshipped in the caves and forests of ancient Greek Arcadia as the protective deity of shepherds. In Roman mythology, he is identified with Faunus, a nature god, and Silvanus, a woodland deity.
My dreamlike images, made in camera, evoke the untamed and mystical qualities of the Great God Pan and his equivalents. This magical journey throughout England’s gardens and parks show how the Horned God has manifested in sculptural form. Most of these mythological statues were selected by the social elite during their Grand Tour of Europe.
Captured in the summers of 2024 and 2025, my photographs investigate the role of Pan as a personification of nature, fertility and the wild. They are a kind of invocation, calling the deity to move through the work into creative expression. I explore Pan not as a patriarchal figure, but as a guardian of the sublime and an archetype of lost innocence and liberation. When the Victorians saw the environment as fragile and threatened by industrialisation and urbanisation, the Horned God symbolised a reunion with the natural world. Now, in our climate emergency, Pan returns, rousing us to recognise our own place within nature.
Panic:Visions of The Horned God in the English Country Garden including texts by Ronald Hutton and Simon Costin will be available from Strange Attractor Press in 2026.
