Alison Jackson "Marilyn's Back"
Alison Jackson "Marilyn's Back" 2000
Photography, Photographic C Type Archival Print
Dimensions: 12 x 18in, Printed on 20 x 24in - Limited edition 3 of 5 + 2AP
24 x 36in - Limited edition 4 of 5 + 2AP
Includes signed and numbered certificate of authenticity
Alison Jackson is a contemporary British artist, photographer, and filmmaker whose work interrogates the cult of celebrity and the constructed nature of public image. A BAFTA and multi award-winning artist, Jackson explores how celebrity is manufactured by the media, publicity industries, and the public figures themselves—examining the blurred boundaries between truth, fiction, and collective fantasy.
Working across photography, film, sculpture, television, publishing, and digital media, Jackson is internationally recognized for her convincingly realistic staged images depicting celebrities in imagined private scenarios. Using carefully styled lookalikes, she constructs scenes that feel uncannily authentic—placing one foot in truth and the other in fantasy. Her work probes society’s voyeuristic appetite and the psychological mechanisms that shape belief, perception, and fame in the age of mass media. She has also created extensive portraits of actors, cultural icons, and political figures—including Sir Elton John, Eddie Redmayne, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rosamund Pike, Gillian Anderson, Ralph Fiennes, Charles Dance, Tom Ford, Boris Johnson, and David Cameron—further examining the fragile architecture of fame and the public’s fascination with power and persona.
Jackson won and was nominated for a BAFTA for her BBC Two series “Doubletake” and has received awards from Infinity, The Photographers’ Gallery, “The Best of the Best,” and Creative Circle. An original TED speaker, she has presented internationally at platforms including Cannes Lions and Design Indaba, as well as leading institutions such as UAL, the Royal College of Art, and Goldsmiths. She has been featured in Who’s Who, among other publications. Four monographs of her photographic work have been published by Penguin, Taschen, and Stern Portfolio.
Her work is held in major public and private collections worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery, London; The Parliamentary Art Collection, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Pompidou Centre, Paris; the International Center of Photography, New York; Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi; and Fotografiska (Stockholm, Tallinn, and Hollywood), among others.
Jackson has exhibited extensively at institutions including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, The Hayward Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Venice Biennale, the Louvre, Kunsthalle Vienna, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, and San Francisco MoMA.
Jackson raises questions about how we think we know celebrities intimately, yet very few of us have met them in reality. Her work explores our insatiable desire to get personal with public personalities, examining the power and seductive nature of imagery that incites voyeurism and fuels our need to believe. Through her imagery, Jackson challenges our preconceptions and ultimately asks: in a media-saturated world, can perception ever be trusted?
Learn more about the artist on our website.