Angelina Jolie breastfeeding her baby
and Britney taking off her knickers
Or are they? The likenesses are uncanny,
but of course, her subjects are lookalikes
Likeness becomes real
Fantasy touches on the believable
Film by Alison Jackson
Is It the Real Thing? [Original]
Artist Alison Jackson's work gives one pause, to put it mildly. The British artist's work -- both on film and in still images -- centers on interjecting celebrity lookalikes into jaw-dropping scenarios.
There's the peek inside a nightmarish Scientology-approved delivery room as Katie Holmes delivers Suri, playful shots of Princes William and Harry cavorting in Nazi regalia and peeks at a very domesticated Paris Hilton behind bars.
Casual observers, though, can easily mistake Jackson's fantastical, elaborate recreations as the real thing. Maybe because we suspect they mirror reality.
Jackson describes herself as an interpreter of public fantasies, an artist giving concrete form to our wild speculations and shrewdly tapping into the insatiable appetite for celebrity dirt.
"It's really about an obsession with celebrity and how we think we know celebrities intimately, but we don't really know them for real," said Jackson. "We only know them through photographs and media imagery and that is not necessarily a medium that tells the whole truth -- or even part of the truth."
Her video work has conjured Queen Elizabeth's grooming routine in BBC specials and Bush family dynamics for "Saturday Night Live."
Her stills, which will be on display starting in December at Los Angeles's M&B gallery, alternately poke fun at and skewer celebs ranging from Madonna to Elton John to Eminem to George W. Bush and Bill Gates.
You can view some of Alison Jackson's lookalikes on her website. And here's an interview with her. Finally, check out her new coffee table book, Confidential.
Daring Doppelgängers
Alison Jackson has photographed the Queen of England on the toilet, George Bush and Tony Blair chatting in the sauna, Mick Jagger doing gymnastics, and Monica Lewinsky lighting Bill Clinton's cigar. Or has she?
The likenesses are uncanny, but of course, her subjects are look-alikes. Her photos demonstrate that while seeing is believing, the truth is another story entirely.
In her work, Jackson says, "Likeness becomes real and fantasy touches on the believable. The viewer is suspended in disbelief. I try to highlight the psychological relationship between what we see and what we imagine. This is bound up in our need to look—our voyeurism—and our need to believe."
Indeed, by showing "celebrities" ostensibly caught unawares, Jackson's pictures show us what we imagine might go on behind closed doors.
Jackson's work causes controversy, because it threatens to cross the line between the private and public life of our contemporary icons.
Because we unquestioningly accept the authenticity of the photograph, it would appear that we are being given a glimpse of something confidential, a private moment.
It is only upon closer examination that we question the reality of the image, and hopefully this makes us question our unwitting tendency to believe everything we see in the media today.
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