Alison Jackson
Alison Jackson
Alison Jacksonis a British BAFTA and multi award-winning artist who explores the cult of celebrity culture - an extraordinary phenomenon created by the media and publicity industries. Jackson makes convincingly realistic work about celebrities doing things in private using lookalikes. She creates scenarios we have all imagined but never seen before. Jackson comments on the public's voyeurism, the power and seductive nature of imagery, and on their need to believe. The artist's work has established wide respect for her as...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth15 May 1960
I'd like to take more pictures of real celebrities. It would be fabulous to photograph Brad Pitt. He's so good-looking and just such a star.
Photography seduces us into thinking we can believe photographs, whereas we can't really believe that a picture can tell us any kind of truth at all.
It's always fun to put fake celebrities in unlikely situations, but somehow it's even more fun when politicians are involved.
Photography acts as a teaser, suggesting we can know something that we can never know. And the more we can't obtain it, the more we want it.
I can't remember exactly how old I was when my parents gave me my first camera, but it was a Canon, and I was certainly far too young to have such a good camera.
The religious imagery and fairytales that formed our shared cultural references have been replaced by the cult of celebrity. Marilyn is the sex goddess, Camilla Parker Bowles is cast as the wicked witch, Che Guevara is the revolutionary. Celebrities have become visual shorthand for narratives that shape our lives.
Art work is inconclusive. It opens your mind up. At least, that's what I hope it does. And advertising, using exactly the same photograph, closes things down. It makes it conclusive. It sells a product, and that is its primary function.
I don't really like using ridicule as a form of humor.
If you see everything through the lens, you are constantly composing pictures. I think in pictures; I don't think in text.
When Princess Diana died, I couldn't understand why people were mourning her death in such an enormous, hysterical way when they didn't actually know her for real.