John Stezaker

In his latest series of collages, John Stezaker explores the edge between caricature and portrait, the real and the incredible. Using a mixture of screen personae drawn from Hollywood's 'golden era', Stezaker's collaged portraits take on an imaginary life of their own. These hybrid characters form an 'unholy marriage' of found material, to play with scale, figure and the viewers' expectations of photographic representation. Accompanying full-colour reproductions, a new essay by Cecilia Jardemar discusses the series' ties to Surrealism, the portraits' power of attraction and the artist's interest in obsolescence.