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From November 20th until December 18th 2020, NeueHouse Hollywood presents photographer Alison Jackson’s Truth is Dead, an exhibition featuring evocative photographs in which look-a-like doubles pose as public figures, celebrities and royals. From Kim Kardashian to the Queen of England, these doppelgängers simulate intimate, and even exposed situations to raise questions about celebrity culture and the public desire for gossip. Stemming from her initial hatred towards the medium of photography, Jackson is “proving that it is easy to lie, that the camera lies, and that you cannot trust your view on photography.”

The BAFTA and multi-award winning English artist has worked across many media and arts platforms, and her photographic portraits, life-like sculptures, films and videos have been exhibited in numerous galleries, museums, art fairs and public collections worldwide including Tate Modern (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

FLAUNT talked to the artist about her new exhibit, the process of creating one of her famous photographs, and the effect of the media on society and vice versa.

Let’s talk about your new exhibit Truth is Dead, what can you tell us about it?

It’s great to be shown at NeueHouse in LA. So that is lovely, and the exhibit is really a lot of my photographs over the years, so it’s like walking into a historical document of private moments of all the leaders and most topical celebrities at the time through the years. It’s all the moments that have been imagined but never seen before brought to light in a picture. And that’s really what I try to do. To create a real photograph to make you sad or laugh or question before you even notice what you are looking at. So that’s one thing I try to do within my photographic works, and it ranges from Kim Kardashion, the Royal family, Meghan and Prince Harry, Donald Trump, of course, the Queen on the loo, and all sorts of things. 

How did the idea begin for this type of pictures? 

Well, I mean I was a student at the Royal College of Art dumped into the photographic department, which I really did not want to go into, but I was forced into it cause I came away from my BA with just a portfolio of photographs of my sculpture, so I didn’t have a physical work to show, but only my photographs of it. So they said I was a photographer, not a sculptor. So I was stuck. I didn’t do any work cause I really hated photography, I thought it was a cheap medium, worthless of fine art values, and not to be trusted. So I think my hatred for photography drove me to make the work that I am - proving that it is easy to lie, that the camera lies, and that you cannot trust your view on photography, you cannot rely on your perception when it comes to photography. And I have proved that. 

What is the message you hope to send the viewer?

I made this work about why we care so much about celebrities. Celebrities are our belief system now. We worship them, and we think we know them intimately but we don’t. We only know them through photographs created by us or them or the internet or media. You know when Princess Diana died people started crying and were heartbroken, and I said ‘what on earth is going on here? Nobody knows her.’ It was fascinating how the media constructed Diana. Everybody hated Diana before she died, and as soon as she died they loved her. And of course that hasn’t stopped. Now we have Kim Kardashian, the queen of the photos. And Donald Trump, the master of the media. You’ve got every media newspaper running after him, they love to hate him. And nobody is questioning or raising questions about the media. The media is a puppet master. They control our lives, and I just think it’s worthy of a few questions. 

And with the rise of social media everything is much more exaggerated now.

It’s magnified. Exacerbated. In 20 years time we’ll have a new distribution service, and will exacerbate it even more. Imagery is never going away, because it’s our language, you know a picture is worth a thousand words. It’s too delicious. We want access to celebrities and their private lives, even if it’s not for real. We don’t care about the fact that we’ll never get to meet them, just knowing a little bit more about them is just good enough. And the more the images teach us, the more delicious they become. The more familiar they become, the more you want to get to know them, and the more we can’t, because they are objects in a photograph. And what you can’t have, you want more. This drives people crazy, and that driving of people crazy to have what they can’t have, what they long for, is the trigger of the industry. 

What is the process of creating one of your photographs?

It’s a nightmare, and one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life. It’s much easier to direct a normal film with actors. First of all, the subjects are not actors, I find anybody on the street that I think I can make look like somebody. By the way, I am looking for a Joe Biden or Kamala, if you can help me. But, basically, I got to find them, and for that I have to scan the streets when I am walking along, I scan everywhere, and I go after them and ask if they would be in my photographs. Then I have to make the wig, and the wig is very complex. I have a stylist from New York that comes with me everywhere to create people’s wigs to perfection. To make Donald Trump’s wig was just a nightmare. I had over 20 top hair stylists and they all melted down or broke down in tears, not because somebody was pressurizing them, but because they just couldn’t do it. And then you have to get the color of the skin right, and then you have to get the body right too. In every shoot I do with a Kim Kardashian look-alike the fake bum gets ruined, because somebody sits down on it and it gets squashed. And then you got to direct them, and they’ve never been directed before, they have no idea what you are talking about. So it’s all just a lot of work.  

What has been the biggest challenge in your career?

I am always worried about getting into trouble. You know, I am always in trouble. The police always stop me from doing my work when I am out on the streets. Like in New York, I took the Donald Trump look-alike to the Trump Tower and thousands and thousands of people came running across the street, and the police came and told us to stop or they were going to take us to jail. And they didn’t. Because the distraction was so great and the crowd was big, they put their sounds on and their blue lights and gave us an escort to outside the Trump Tower. And, to me, that was the most phenomenal moment, because I could’ve never paid for that, I could’ve never gotten permission for that. It was like a dream come true.

But I am always in trouble. It’s always a problem for me to get my work shown somewhere, because people are scared. I try to push the envelope, try to see how far it can go without going over the edge, so that is my biggest challenge. 

What are you working on for the future? 

I am really enjoying making sculptures at the moment. I’ve done Donald Trump and George Bush. They are totally realistic, they look completely real. I wanna do the Queen on the loo next, and I am sure I’ll be doing more for my exhibitions. Don’t get me wrong, I love photography and I can do it. I am doing a book half real, half fake, so real celebrities mixed with the fake celebrities. We are doing the real Elton John with the fake Queen in his home in Vegas. Just did Tom Ford with a Paris Hilton look-alike. Lots of people. Pink Floyd with the Queen. I like mixing real and fake so you really don’t know what you are looking at. 

I was supposed to do a bit of theater performance, but because it’s Covid time that’s been pushed back, so I am just waiting now. It’s such a shame. I really wanted to do my theater performance here in America because it’s very fun. I take someone from the audience and make them into a star on stage. I have a stylist crafting and packing them up into looking like a celebrity, and then I do a live photoshoot. It’s hilarious when you see the pictures pop up on the screen. And then we push them out on the street and see if they get flash mobbed. It was a very successful show in London, and I wanted to bring it here. Maybe in 2022, but at the moment I am launching it digitally. 

Any last words you want to share?

It’s worth taking risks. I never wanted anybody to look at my work and say ‘how nice.’ That is what most people do with photography. I wanted it to be a motif for people to have angry thoughts or all sorts of reactions. People come out hating me for doing this work, now that’s not very nice to me, but I find that that’s the kind of reaction that I prefer, because I didn’t want anyone to go to sleep while looking at my work. Photography is such a passive media, we look, we absorb. We watch television just before we want to go to sleep, and I didn’t want this body of work to be that. I wanted it to be to wake up, think about it, grab the attention, think about it, look at it. Taking risks is not easy, but it’s worth it.