Quints, by Lottie Davies, 2008

The 2008 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize has been won by Lottie Davies, 37, for her portrait which was inspired by her friend Caroline's nightmare that she gave birth to quintuplets. Drawing on classical imagery of the Madonna and Child, Davies also took inspiration from several visits to the National Gallery, replicating the darkness and colours found in Caravaggio and Titian to portray the 'calm and serenity of motherhood, as well as the feeling of imprisonment.' Rather than asking Caroline to pose, she used a model, Alicia Clarke, to allow 'more freedom to interpret the story, unclouded by the representational aspects of portraiture.'

The £12,000 award was presented to the British-born photographer at the National Portrait Gallery, London, last night (Tuesday 4 November).

Davies' first-prize winning photograph is part of an ongoing series Memories and Nightmares, a personal project for which Davies asked several friends to send her written accounts of either an early childhood memory or a nightmare. 'We all have our own tales and myths which we use to tell our lives. In some ways, a person can be described as the total of all their stories and experiences,' she says. 'Nightmares are similar to early memories in that they can be so intense that the recollection sometimes lasts all one's life. When this happens, they become a marker, an event in a person's life, and as such, become part of them and their personal history.'

The portrait was shot using a Horseman 5 x 4 in a near derelict building in East London. Marla, Alicia's 10 week old niece, modelled as the Quints and was photographed in multiple frames later combined in post-production to achieve the final image. 'I still enjoy traditional portraiture but I do think there is space to play with and expand on the idea of representation of people and of things. That, to me, is the purpose of image-making' she says.

Born in 1971, Davies has worked as a photographer for the past eight years. In a diverse career she has worked on assignments ranging from reportage features on the Kalahari Bushmen for the Telegraph Magazine to illustrating recipes for chef Gary Rhodes cookery books. A desire to resist being pigeonholed led Davies to create this series of work.