John Stezaker

Born in 1949, Worcester, UK

Lives and works in London

John Stezaker’s work re-examines the various relationships to the photographic image: as documentation of truth, purveyor of memory, and symbol of modern culture. Using publicity shots of classic film stars, Stezaker merges, overlaps and creates hybrid ‘icons’ that dissociate the familiar to create sensations of the uncanny. In certain works, faded post-cards surreally shift these faces into landscapes. Through the handcrafted act of splicing together, inverting, or adjusting an image, Stezaker embarks on, in his own words, ‘a process that cuts it off from its disappearance into the everyday world’.

John Stezaker has profoundly affected artistic developments of the last three decades, from conceptual art and appropriation to the re-emergence of collage. His work has been widely shown at museums around the world including solo shows at major institutions such as Tate Britain, London, Whitechapel Gallery, London and Tel Aviv Museum of Art.