Alison Jackson’s photographs
or "Mental images"
An essay by John A. Walker, the author of the books Art in the Age of Mass Media, Art and Celebrity and Art & outrage.
Alison Jackson’s "Mental images"
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Alison Jackson. Still fr. Diana video, (from "Mental images" series), 1998, black and white photograph / print.
Alison Jackson became notorious during 1999 for producing black and white photographs that apparently showed Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed with a mixed race love child. Since both adults had died before any such baby existed, the photograph was clearly impossible but it appeared convincing because Jackson had employed look-alike models to pose as Di and Dodi. The photos were technically assured, beautifully composed and lit in a manner reminiscent of old master paintings of the Holy Family.
Alison Jackson (b. 1960) studied at Chelsea College of Art and the Royal College during the 1990s. Initially, she explored sculpture and performance but then became more interested in photography and one of its genres in particular: "staged, constructed, directed or tableaux photography". This genre has appealed to numerous artists in recent decades; one thinks of Calum Colvin, Les Krims, Cindy Sherman, Jo Spence and Boyd Webb.
For a long time, photography was regarded as an inherently truthful medium because cameras recorded the surface appearance of reality mechanically— hence photographs were indexical signs— but since scenes and events can be devised specially for cameras, what they document can be fictional characters and situations. (This is especially obvious in the case of photographs found in visual advertisements.) Alison Jackson eschews the digital generation of images from scratch or the manipulation of her images via computers— apart from retouching— precisely because she wants to retain the "reality effect" of traditional photography in order to make her actors and fictional scenarios plausible and persuasive.
While some of Alison Jackson’s photographs are stylistically indebted to oil paintings and to formal, official portrait photographs, others are indebted to the "snatched" or "surveillance" style of photo-journalists: couples or threesomes are framed as if glimpsed through doorways and gaps in curtains; zoom lenses and the use of grain or blur in the print provide a telephoto quality. Such techniques may cause viewers disquiet because they make them feel like peeping toms.
Like so many of us, Alison Jackson is interested in celebrities. Pop artists shared this interest and Jackson is an admirer of Andy Warhol who made silkscreen paintings of mass media icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, and who established, for his films, his own cast of Superstars. Besides members of the British Royal Family, Jackson’s photographs have been about Tony and Cherie Blair, Marilyn Monroe, President George W. Bush and the footballer David Beckham and his wife Victoria ("Posh" Spice Girl). We may not have met any of them in the flesh but we feel that we know them because of the flood of images and stories about them in the mass media. Millions deplore the intrusive behaviour of journalists and the paparazzi but simultaneously are voyeurs fascinated by the lives of celebrities. Arguably, media stars play the same mythological role in our daily lives as the Gods did in the lives of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Alison Jackson - photographs - 1 | 2
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