Marriage (Film Portrait Collage) XXVII

Part of the revolutionary first wave of British Conceptual artists, John Stezaker is celebrated for his photo-collages and use of appropriated imagery. Coming to prominence in the 1970s, during the heyday of the Pictures Generation, he drew upon the aesthetics of Dada and Surrealism, as well as the works of Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke. His manipulation of found photographic materials was deeply influential to the Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s, and would lead to his receipt of the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2012. In his Marriage series of 2006-2007, Stezaker spliced together publicity shots of classic film stars, creating uncanny, chimeric figures that recall the ‘Exquisite Corpses’ of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. Like artefacts from a lost world, these hybrid beings are simultaneously alien and alluring, destabilising the fixity of the photographic image. Works from the series are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and have featured in numerous major solo exhibitions over the last decade. In 2019, Stezaker premiered a film on the same theme at the National Portrait Gallery, London.