At first glance John Stezaker’s distinctive work seems very much in the conceptual (and even post-conceptual) tradition of critiquing how images produce meaning by taking them apart and breaking them down, only to recombine the elements in unexpected ways or contexts. It is at this very point however that Stezaker departs from orthodox (and by now somewhat played-out) ways of thinking about appropriation, instead bringing out a sense of how fundamentally strange, how irrational photographs are as objects, suggesting a separate picture-world, the unconscious vision implicit in the material, only waiting for Stezaker to let it loose, undoing all of our glib assumptions about photography. The technique might not seem overly sophisticated, just cutting though the images or overlaying them, but the relationships he can create with each piece belie the “simplicity” of his approach. There is a highly charged visual intelligence operating here, his displacement of the picture-plane, his way of peeling back layers, blurring identities, genders and landscapes has a reach that extends beyond the scope of mere critical engagement into more expansive territories. He arrives at a place that is decidedly un-conceptualised, informed though it might be by an extensive knowledge of those issues, weighing the flotsam of a visually saturated culture, suggesting its impossibilities, blind avenues and endless labyrinths. The image is only ever a place-holder for the rigours and complexities of seeing itself; this is Stezaker’s real subject, and more importantly how we understand what we see, the structures of perception that shape our relationship to the world around us, defining our reality. You can find a further selection of Stezaker's work here.
