We’re usually good at guessing prizes but have to admit that we didn’t see this year’s DB Photography prize coming. We were so in love with Pieter Hugo’s Permanent Error that failed at our guess, but John Stezaker was our clear second choice of course!
The previously-forgotten, now highly sought-after English artist gets this year’s £30,000 from the annual DB Photography prize (the 2012 exhibition is about to finish and runs until Sunday) for his 2011 exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, focused around his vintage photo schizophrenia compositions.
John takes classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations and makes collages to give old images a new meaning by y adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together. His Mask & Marriage series are probably the most well-known and easily recognizable for those glamorous profiles mixed & mashed together creating the ultimate Hollywood star.
If only doctors had attempted to merge Bogarts with Bacalls…. oh wait… nature already did it… never mind, John Stezaker’s photography goes far beyond, and we celebrate his award. Congrats.
