...Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie having anal sex,
Tom Cruise sneaking a look
at David Beckham's crotch at a urinal,
Paul McCartney about to whack
Heather Mills with a wooden leg,
and Simon Cowell in the gym suggestively
positioned below a bodybuilder
Britney Gets Her Knickers Off
Di, Dodi & Baby
Cowell's Workout
Becks and Cruise in Urinal
Macca and Leg
Amy's Beehive
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.
You can view some of Alison Jackson's lookalikes on her website. And here's an interview with her. Her latest exhibition is Seeing Is Deceiving. Finally, check out her new coffee table book, Confidential.
Is This the Real Thing?
About 20 minutes in, I realise the intensity of our verbal jousting has led Alison Jackson and me to twirl our respective hairdos into matted birds' nests.
The 47-year-old photographer is intriguing, intelligent, infuriating and briskly sexy (dressed in a very short skirt with killer legs, she has the air of bossy head girl meets femme fatale).
She adamantly tries to protect her privacy while being known for those pictures and TV series featuring lookalikes as celebrities caught (blurred, paparazzi-style) in privacy-shattering moments:
The Queen reading on the loo, Cherie Blair getting an enema from Carole Caplin; and Jackson's first jolting image, Diana and Dodi cuddling their lovechild.
Jackson's new set of lookalike pictures, to be exhibited in her first UK solo show since 2003, feature Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie having anal sex, Tom Cruise sneaking a look at David Beckham's crotch at a urinal...
Sir Paul McCartney about to whack Heather Mills with a wooden leg, a rubber-gloved Queen starting the washing up, Simon Cowell in the gym suggestively positioned below a bodybuilder, and many of Amy Winehouse (in one receiving an apparent rectal examination).
The new shots of Winehouse don't quite work, I say, because you can imagine the incident being caught on film for real. These images don't add to what we know. Yes, Jackson assents in her posh, playful voice, celebrities like Winehouse have “collapsed the boundary between public and private”.
Have these blurrily shot works become one-note? The joke is glancing, then suddenly over. Is it time for to Jackson to move on?
She's taking “straight” portraits of theatre stars now for J Sheekey's, the starry London fish restaurant, she reveals - although this isn't the most ambitious of her plans, it will emerge. “I do a lot of portraits, many no one sees,” she says.
“David Starkey, Beryl Bainbridge, David Cameron. I'm quite shy and in awe of them. They are extraordinarily brilliant and I am minuscule in comparison. With politicians it's amazing seeing them go from family person to their public face in a flash.”
She has “quite a few Camerons'” on her books, and is renowned for her explicit and rude mockery. Are these famous people nervous about her intentions? “I know I have a mischievous streak but I'm quite formal. I don't have a problem with doing well-behaved. I hope nothing rude pops out of my mouth.”
She is about to photograph someone whom she has featured in the past using a lookalike. “I can't name them. It'll jinx it. I'll approach with great caution.”
How do celebrities react when they recognise her? “Some love it, some don't, some go blank. Liz Hurley got huffy. Look, I'm not into celebrity,” she says impatiently, “I'm into our perception of celebrity.”
You satirise celebrity, yet you've kind of become one, I say. “I don't mix with celebrities,” she replies (adept at lobbing non-sequiturs if she doesn't like a question).
“I do these mischievous photographs and then people invite me to lunch and sit me next to celebrities I've done lookalike photos of - for fun. We think we know celebrities well.
"They're an object which we have ownership over: magazine pictures, YouTube clips. Then you see them for real and think, ‘This person exists, they're 3-D flesh and blood', and you're stuck for words: it's the gap between who they are in your imagination and realising you don't know them at all.”
For a start, they are smaller, she laughs. Her pictures aren't horrible, she insists. “They play on things we think we know about celebrities anyway.”
Given the force of the images, she is surprisingly meek, claiming to apologise to celebrities if she has caused them offence. Hard to square with the gusty go-getter opposite me.
“Mostly people are generous,” she says. “Politicians liked Spitting Image didn't they? Jordan had breast enlargements and reduction because she wanted comment on it.”
But she's adding to the culture of celebrity, herself, surely. If it wasn't there, which seems to be her wish, she would have no source material.
“No, I'm commenting,” she says sharply, “and I take it seriously. It is madness that people live their lives through people they don't know. It creates a desire that's never-ending. It is totally removed from reality.”