John Stezaker is a London based artist who works with ‘found’ images of celebrities, models or landscapes and binds them together through manipulation. Stezaker manipulates his images through adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create a new unique piece. Often he rejoins portrait images of different people to make a new portrait that is more interesting for the eye to view.

The above images are from Stezaker’s famous Mask series in which he fuses the profiles of glamorous models with natural images. I believe that these pieces suggest an idea of the importance of natural beauty as the colour of the landscape overpowers the background and draws the eye so the black and white model is almost totally discarded. 

Both of the original portrait images have a shallow depth of field that ensures the images only focus is on the newly constructed face Stezaker has created. The harsh line just off the images centre draws the eye to the inaccurate joining of the 2 images, highlighting the imperfection.

I believe his images fit the theme of identity as cutting up, removing and moving the face around confuse the eye as no full face is seen, just created by the joining of others. I believe by doing this Stezaker is making a powerful statement about how people hide and change their identities by using witty and amusing images.