John Stezaker

British artist John Stezaker's photographic collages exist in the long, and often socio-political, line of artists whose work defined movements like Surrealism, Constructivism, Conceptualism and Postmodernism. Following this train of thought, Stezaker's work shares many similarities with Joachim Schmid's series Photogenic Drafts (posted on this blog here). As excerpted from the Stills website:



"Breathing new life into photographs salvaged from forgotten film archives and obsolete magazines, John Stezaker intuitively transforms these found portraits into otherworldly, uncanny beings. Playing with our fascination with the face, Stezaker’s subtle yet unsettling interventions toy with the subconscious and the surreal.

Using a manual cut-and paste technique he continues the rich history of collage by dissolving the naturalistic picture plane and constructing a fragmented and dislocated view of contemporary reality. The individual images fuse and separate before our eyes, opening up new characters, relationships and meanings."











All Images © John Stezaker