Mask XCI, 2009.

Pioneer of British Photo-Art, John Stezaker‘s unnerving interventions into traditional portraiture play on our fascination with the face. His portraits retain their inherent glamour from their initial prevalence in the 40s and 50s as postcards, film stills, and classic film stars’ publicity shots, yet expose:

a dark fascination with the fragility of the photographic illusion.

The portrait collage, which he describes as ‘marriages’ of different identities (often different sexes), become the site for the making and the unmaking of persona.

These collages act as a bringing of worlds together, a binding of the separated. But these acts of connection seem also only to reveal that what is bound is already falling apart.

Third Person II, 1988-1990.

Marriage I, 2006.

Film Portrait (She) VIII, 2005.

Mask LXV, 2007.

Incision V, 2005.