Masks, Ghosts, Spheres. The Construction and Appearance of the Third in the Collages of John Stezaker (since 2016)

Florian Flömer, M.A.

The collages of John Stezaker combine outmoded filmstills, postcards and publicity shots of actors long forgotten. Relating to both Surrealism and Dadaism, the collages reflect upon contemporary concepts of appropriating images from the media as well. In different series Stezaker manages to disturb the coherent experience of the image as a whole by cutting up and overlaying images from different sources. The combination of two images creates a third one that resides in the space between. It was Roland Barthes who examined the third sense in some Eisenstein filmstills as a mode of the image between movement and standstill, that becomes visible when the floating image of the film gets interrupted and lays open its photographic origin. Nevertheless is the third a term that undermines every binary opposition and opens up long established structures in theory as in perception.