John Stezaker

John Stezaker's use of the photograph is loaded with commentary on the medium and its use in popular and vernacular culture. Through juxtaposing imagery from film stills, publicity photographs, studio portraits and postcards, he illuminates methods of concealing and constructing identity through image making. Advertising, television and cinema all use the face to promote fantasy and Stezaker makes us acutely aware of this through cutting and pasting images of faces together. The marriage series of 1940s and 50s film stars does this particularly well, with faces 'fitted' together to make new identities which blur the character and gender of the sitter. He also montages elements of landscape imagery with portraiture to suggest psychological and emotional states. In Mask XXXV, a postcard of Lydstep Cavern showing the opening of a cave looking out on blue sky is placed within the centre of the woman's face, linking the materiality of the landscape with the physicality and possible thinking of the sitter. His recent film portrait collages bring new observations to us, playing with mirrored imagery of trees and their association with facial features. Within all the work, Stezaker reflects back on the viewer's method of receiving the imagery and our imaginative capacity to project and create identities within what we see. An excellent show, worth a long look. [Lucy Gallwey]