John Stezaker

Cut Collage
The approach

Collage made from period movie and travel magazines
Small in scale 24.5 x 19.5 cm.

A classic studio image of a celebrity, with a silhouette/shadow of a figure applied across the celebrities face, making the well known face unrecognizable. You know it is a celebrity because you can see a trace of an autograph – but you can’t make it out.
The shadow images are often of woodland scenes. The shadow is therefore a place.
Stezaker has aligned the shadow image to come from the eye, so it’s from the gaze of the eye that the shadow appears and the shadow is facing the figure. It is made explicit as a narrative that the shadow/landscape is a memory, a place where something has happened, possibly something sinister is implied

De`ja`vu (day – zha – vew) a feeling of having experienced the present situation before.

I can’t help but to continue thinking about this show and from this it lead me to ponder male identity, and Melanie Manchot’s show ‘Security’ which lead me to search out Magritte’s paintings ‘Le Viol’ (The Rape) and through the process of all this I rediscovered ‘Gigantic Days’ and then of course it hit – John Stezaker !

Had Magritte begun ‘Gigantic Days’ as a collage?

Stezaker’s reversal of the shadow, facing inwards to the self, being made explicit as sight because it is attached – connected to the eye of the self (viewer). The shadow being made from a forest or landscape signifying a place, a time. The place is being acknowledged as having been experienced or remembered.