John Stezaker – Centre for Contemporary Photography – CCP

23 Sep John Stezaker – Centre for Contemporary Photography – CCP

The Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) on George Street in Collingwood, currently has an exhibition of vintage photography and collage from the artist John Stezaker, entitled: ‘Lost World’.

The work plays with vintage Hollywood stills that John Stezaker finds offline. He is particularly interested in images from C grade films, or those which did not find popularity. He makes cuts into the these photographs to reframe the focal point of the images, or to remove the traditional point of focus (often faces).

In some images, he uses layering to add another meaning to a portrait of a person, or of an interaction between two people, using landscapes overlaid to describe something about more about the subject.

Stezaker conveys a lot of meaning through his cuts and collage. Often his cuts are violent – across the faces or eyes of his subjects. Or he will add a layer of meaning to a vintage C grade Hollywood photo to add another dimension of meaning to the artwork.