Taschen | 264 pages | $39.99
By SHARON STEEL | December 3, 2007
Alison Jackson’s photo book Confidential couldn’t have been published at a better time. Our culture has never been so enamored by its own obsession with celebrity. Using look-alikes — some shockingly good, some merely passable — Jackson stages and shoots scenes of exuberant voyeurism that catch both viewer and subject unaware. Jackson is no paparazzi, nor does her work vaguely channel inspirations of the various cults of Hollyweird. Confidential is direct, snarky, and brazen; a coffee-table gift book dipped in superstar grime. She fearlessly tugs away at the curtain that separates what we assume we know and what we really know about our icons and movers-and-shakers, and the result is stunning. Does anyone still give a shit about that new sit-com they’re plugging? Their latest fashion line? The book they had ghostwritten? Why bother glossing over what people really want to know, their base desire for information? In Confidential, Jackson gives us exactly that: the Queen of England taking a shit, Madonna bathing herself in bottles of Kaballah water, Paris Hilton taking digital pictures of her own vagina. After a few hundred pages, nothing feels controversial anymore, and it’s hard to tell what’s more bizarre — that fact, or the images themselves.
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