John Grenville Stezaker is an English conceptual artist. He introduces new meanings to already existing images by appropriating “readymade” materials, such as vintage film stills, old photographs, or postcards and conjoining them into new, unique images that bear surreal qualities. However, Stezaker states that he does not have to look for images – they find him. This is how he describes the process of arriving at the final work: “Images in charity shops are like orphans, they’ve lost their context or culture, they’ve gone a little bit out of date. They’ve been neglected and overlooked for years and people have passed them by, then suddenly here I am, the alternative foster home. But unfortunately I then inflict terrible abuse down in the basement where I cut them up.” Sometimes one picture is simply positioned over the centre of another; elsewhere the silhouette of a figure is cut out; its ghost-like absence is filled in by more landscape or someone else’s body. Stezaker’s work re-examines the various relationships to the photographic image: as documentation of truth, purveyor of memory, and symbol of modern culture.

saatchigallery/john_stezaker