EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: ARTIST ALISON JACKSON ON THE BLURRED LINE BETWEEN TRUTH, FICTION, AND POWER—FEATURED IN “THE ART OF RESISTANCE” ISSUE
The Untitled Magazine sat down with BAFTA-winning British artist, photographer, and filmmaker Alison Jackson for “THE ART OF RESISTANCE” ART EDITION of The Untitled Magazine for an exclusive interview. Through her work, Jackson examines the increasingly blurred boundaries between truth, fiction, celebrity, and political power. Presented in connection with The Untitled Space’s 10th-anniversary exhibition, UPRISE 2025: The Art of Resistance, the interview explores how Jackson uses meticulously staged imagery to expose the seductive machinery of media manipulation and our complicity in the spectacle. Read on for the full interview below featured in the print edition out now.
Alison Jackson, the BAFTA-winning British artist, photographer, and filmmaker, is internationally renowned for her searingly subversive images that question everything we think we know about fame, power, and truth. With one foot in reality and the other in fantasy, Jackson creates meticulously staged photographs and films using celebrity lookalikes to explore the cult of celebrity and the voyeuristic hunger that fuels modern media.
“I hate photography,” Jackson declares. “That slimy, deceitful medium that is worthless. And so, I started making work about how much I hate photography and how much it lies to us.”
Her images, like the now-iconic Trump with Miss Mexico or Queen Feeds her Corgis, operate as both spectacle and social critique. Her latest work continues this tradition, amplifying the grotesque theater of political power, masculine delusion, and American iconography gone haywire. These include staged images of Donald Trump lounging shirtless in bed, gorging on a mountain of Big Macs (Burgers, 2019), ripping apart the U.S. Constitution (Constitution, 2024), or posing proudly with a $10 billion check from Elon Musk (Elon, 2024).
Jackson’s feminist lens pierces through the pageantry. While her work might be misread as satire, it’s in fact a deeply layered interrogation of image-making, masculinity, propaganda, and manipulation. “People want to see something that they feel they shouldn’t be seeing,” she explains. “It’s voyeurism. It’s power.”
Her practice originated in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death—an event she describes as a collective psychic rupture. “People were caring more about her than if one of their relatives had died,” Jackson recalls. “It was just this extraordinary mass collective phenomenon. We only really knew about Princess Diana through media stories. We didn’t really know her for real.”
This prompted Jackson to stage fictionalized, intimate images of Diana—provocations that both captivated and enraged. “People were laying flowers underneath it. It was this kind of shrine. And at the same time, people were vilifying me in the media.” The reaction was so intense it nearly got her expelled from the Royal College of Art. “All I can say is the Royal College of Art did not want to lose their Royal emblem… Prince Phillip was very much around on a weekly basis. I was a bit of a thorn in their side.”
Her visual subversions continue to cut through the illusion of power with surgical precision. In the work Elon 2024, a Trump lookalike grins while clutching a ludicrously oversized check from Elon Musk, amid a scene of fast food, champagne, and hypersexualized chaos. “The styling is incredibly difficult,” Jackson reveals. “It took 20 professional hair stylists to do Donald Trump’s wig—eventually ($20k later), I ended up doing it myself!”
Jackson doesn’t shy away from confronting the deification of male authority figures through carefully constructed absurdity. In Constitution, 2024, a Trump double dramatically tears the U.S. Constitution while surrounded by applauding men in suits. The scene, while obviously fabricated, feels viscerally real—because it echoes the cultural dread of political erosion and authoritarian spectacle. “We live in this world now that sort of blends truth and fiction,” she says. “We have been seduced into believing everything and not being able to question it properly.”
Another image, Melania, captures a Trump-era First Lady lounging poolside, casually sipping a drink while reading a newspaper with the bold headline: DUMP TRUMP. The blurry, paparazzi-like framing gives the shot its punch, luring the viewer into the fantasy of a liberation narrative the public will never fully witness.
Jackson’s work continues to walk a tightrope of plausibility. “It has to remain plausible. I’m looking at a way of trying to address what we’re talking about—how we can’t tell what’s real or fake anymore. We don’t care. We like the fake, and photography seduces us.”
In another staged moment, Burgers shows the current president reclined in disarray, surrounded by dozens of Big Macs in a gilded hotel room—his red tie undone, his belly exposed, and American flag blanket partially covering him. It is the image of decadence, sloth, and gluttony—anchored in plausibility yet entirely constructed. “I enjoy those kinds of topics,” Jackson notes, “rather than the satire. And I’ll try and always say I’m not a satirist, because I’m not, in sentiment.”
While her art is often mistaken for parody, Jackson asserts it is rooted in psychological truth. “My favorite place is realism… Anything that’s out of the mold, anything that’s just a bit too hot, people can’t deal with it. And don’t want to deal with it.”
She describes working with celebrity lookalikes as another level of performance. “Finding lookalikes is a nightmare! I chase after people down streets, go up to people in restaurants, get shouted at by offended doubles—often to find the ‘lookalike’ is sometimes the real celeb!”
The work becomes even more charged when lookalikes internalize their roles. “The lookalikes become divas in 30 seconds. The Trump lookalike became a monster like the real Donald Trump. I didn’t work with him for a year—it was too unbearable.”
Her recent series, Real or Not, features real celebrities such as Sir Elton John and Tom Ford staged alongside lookalikes of others in surreal scenarios. “Celebs approach and ask if they can be in one of my photographs,” Jackson shares. In one image, the real Elton John poses with a fake Queen Elizabeth singing “Dancing Queen” and “God Save the Queen.”
Ultimately, Jackson’s work is not merely a commentary on fame—it’s a call to action against the manipulation of mass perception. “We know we can’t trust the real, so the only way forward is to show the fake,” she reflects. “The camera is our new puppet master, our new god. And the media companies are the financiers of it.”
As photography becomes ever more accessible and reality increasingly fragmented, Jackson’s work resonates with a sharpened urgency. “Imagery is too delicious. You can short-circuit information with an image that you just can’t do in any other way, and it’s just too seductive.”
By weaponizing the lie at the core of photography, Alison Jackson lays bare the mechanics of power and seduction. Her lens doesn’t just mimic reality—it unmasks it. Through the looking glass of her constructed truths, we are forced to confront our complicity in a world where illusion reigns supreme.
Jackson’s impact on the global art scene is reflected in her numerous accolades and exhibitions. She was awarded and nominated for a BAFTA for her BBC2 series Doubletake and has received honors from Infinity, The Photographers’ Gallery, and Creative Circle, among others. Her work has been widely exhibited at major institutions including Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Hayward Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Venice Biennale, the Pompidou Centre, SF MoMA, and Fotografiska. Her photographs are part of permanent collections at the National Portrait Gallery, The Parliamentary Art Collection, The Frances Foundation, Musée de la Photographie in Brussels, and the International Center of Photography. Four monographs of her work have been published by Taschen, Penguin, and Stern Portfolio, solidifying her place as one of the most incisive and daring visual provocateurs of our time.
