Woman, as Nature has created her and as she is currently reared by man, is his enemy and can only be his slave or his despot, but never his companion. She will be able to become his companion only when she has the same rights as he, when she is his equal in education and work. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch – Venus in Furs Venus in Furs makes reference to the erotic novel of the same title, which was written in the dying years of the Habsburg Empire It is arguably an early feminist work, and the trope of the submissive male in the story is a mirror image of the relations between men and women at the time. The prototype of the writer's fantasies in the book is Titian's "Venus with a Mirror" and my works make reference to mirrors both in the imagery and the antique powder compacts which they include. In these works the painted images parody early erotic photographs and are set in old Victorian photograph album pages, challenging notions of what was acceptable in the context of a family album then, and perhaps questioning their acceptability for different reasons now.