Alison Jackson Quotes

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Alison Jackson

Profession : Artist

Birth : May 15, 1960

I don't really like using ridicule as a form of humor.

Alison Jackson

The religious imagery and fairytales that formed our shared cultural references have been replaced by the cult of celebrity. Marilyn is the sex goddess, Camilla Parker Bowles is cast as the wicked witch, Che Guevara is the revolutionary. Celebrities have become visual shorthand for narratives that shape our lives.

Alison Jackson

Photography can be a deceitful, superficial medium that leads us into believing something even though we know it's not necessarily true. It lulls us into a false sense of complacency.

Alison Jackson

Art work is inconclusive. It opens your mind up. At least, that's what I hope it does. And advertising, using exactly the same photograph, closes things down. It makes it conclusive. It sells a product, and that is its primary function.

Alison Jackson

Photography seduces us into thinking we can believe photographs, whereas we can't really believe that a picture can tell us any kind of truth at all.

Alison Jackson

Among other things, I use a Samsung mobile phone, a very bad quality video camera, and an old Olympus with extremely bad Sigma lenses.

Alison Jackson

I'd like to take more pictures of real celebrities. It would be fabulous to photograph Brad Pitt. He's so good-looking and just such a star.

Alison Jackson

I'm not satirical in a traditional way. What I do is more about creating caricatures and cartoons. I am commentating on the nature of how we live through photography, and how you can twist an angle to create a different perception of a person.

Alison Jackson

I'm not really interested in the celebrity themselves. I'm interested in the perception of the celebrity.

Alison Jackson

I go up to people and ask if I can use them in my photos. Occasionally it is the person in question, as happened with James Hewitt. How embarrassing. He just laughed and said, 'You can't afford me.'

Alison Jackson

I'm particularly interested in how you can't rely on your own perception.

Alison Jackson

Now celebrity has taken on a holy status all of its own, and we look to the stars to provide us with the transcendental experience that was once achieved through religion.

Alison Jackson

I'm a contemporary artist and I show in art galleries and museums. I show a number of photographs and films, but I also make television programs, books and some appetizing, all with the same concept.

Alison Jackson

I am very pro-royal. Britain without them would be a sadder place.

Alison Jackson

It's always difficult to see yourself as other people do, but I'm realistic about my appearance. I wasn't born with one of those pretty, pretty faces, so I've never been absorbed with the way I look. I just try to make the most of what I've got.

Alison Jackson

Of course, my own political beliefs inform the ideas I come up with.

Alison Jackson

I think privacy is important, and it's important you don't bore people with your own boring self.

Alison Jackson

I'm really interested in how we view the public figure, what makes a public figure, what makes a celebrity, and how images make politicians, so I take an interest in politics, but it's really an interest in the image.

Alison Jackson

I can't remember exactly how old I was when my parents gave me my first camera, but it was a Canon, and I was certainly far too young to have such a good camera.

Alison Jackson

Because Bin Laden's culture doesn't permit the worship of images, they understand how powerful images are. We wouldn't have thought of creating a visual bomb. In a way, he's chopped down two iconic buildings, and used our very truth imagery, to express himself. It's fascinating... I mean, dreadful.

Alison Jackson