Action Jackson

English photographer and artist Alison Jackson best known for her spoof lookalike photographs of celebrities.

In 2022 I sat on a panel of three at the prestigious Ivy Club in central London for a talk themed: The Humorous Side of Photography. To my far right is Haley Morris-Cafiero, an American photographer whose ‘Wait Watchers’ series, in which she photographs the reactions of passers-by to her presence, went viral in 2013. To my immediate right is Alison Jackson. I present for 15 minutes highlighting why humour can be an important tool for photojournalists in delivering a truth and hand the microphone to a smiling bleached blonde Jackson, creaking head-to-toe in her rock star black leathers. ‘I think photography is a slimy and untrustworthy medium that seduces you into believing it’s real,’ she says with commitment. Despite our differences, I admit to being a little seduced by Jackson’s argument, photography and character.

Jackson shot to prominence in 1999 when she created black and white photographs that appeared to show the late Princess Diana and her partner, Dodi Al Fayed with a mixed-race love child. Titled Mental Images, the photographs were part of her MA in Fine-Art photography graduation show at the Royal College of Art. She was 37. At the age of 30, Alison began taking night classes in art after realising her life as a receptionist wasn't fulfilling. Using styled celebrity look-a-likes, she has gone on to be renowned for her often laugh-out-loud photographs of people we think we recognise doing what we’d like to think they do when we’re not looking; The Royal Family watching Oprah's interview with Harry and Meghan; The Queen on the toilet; Princes Harry and William cavorting naked in a changing room; Camilla wearing the crown. ‘Celebrities are our new folk religion. Each represents a different type of person; David Beckham as a great sportsman, father, gay icon. Kate Middleton represents that if you work hard you could become Queen. We’ve a need to believe and this celebrity culture serves us that,’ explains Jackson.

Jackson wrote, directed, and co-produced BBC Two's 2003 television series Doubletake (with Tiger Aspect) which won an award at the 2002 BAFTAs. She has made a series of Mockumentaries and fake biopics for Channel 4 about public figures, using U.S. President George W Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair lookalikes in a series of staged scenes of their public lives (Blaired Vision, broadcast on 26 June 2007, coincided with Blair's exit from office). She has won awards for her advertising campaign for Schweppes drinks. She has produced witty West End theatre shows and directed pop videos. She has published books and curated celebrity lookalikes in Selfridges department store shop window to promote one. It’s fair to say, she has done a lot.

To the outsider, it can appear Jackson had an hilarious ‘Carry On’ kind of childhood. Behind the grand facade there was a lot going on and a long journey to laughter. ‘The starting point for me is that everything is observational because as a child I was seen and not heard. I had a very noisy father who liked to be heard a lot. In a way I was just the servant. I had to go and do things for my father and get this and get that and shut up. So then you just stop speaking or don’t speak and definitely not encouraged to speak and so I just watched everything and watched the world go by and some of it was kind of crazy. My father was very eccentric and was a recluse but at the same time, when he saw people he loved them and then he’d want to get them drunk and get drunk himself and lay on the floor. It was kind of a madcap.’

Jackson lived a fabulously rich life at the family home, Poulton Priory, a 3000-acre estate, once the site of an 11th century Gloucestershire monastery. When her father, George Hulbert Mowbray-Jackson passed away in 1992, a firm believer in Victorian values and primogeniture (the right of succession belonging to the firstborn child), the estate passed solely to her sibling, Julian. You wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of that joke. She didn’t even get an apple tree. ‘My father had no structure in his life because he’d never been to school, he’d had a governess. He’d never had a job because he didn’t have to work and his mother didn’t want him to work and leave the family estate in case he found out things that he shouldn’t. He lived in this king of his castle life and behaved as he wanted to, which I suppose if you weren’t one of the proles being pushed around the place was amusing.’

Jackson’s mother Catherine (who passed away in 2001 surviving her husband by nine years), a former debutante and horsewoman, was the more stabilising figure in what was undoubtedly, the George Jackson show. ‘He was actually very funny and he loved parties when he wasn’t being a recluse and drinking when he wasn’t being a recluse, talking too much when he wasn’t being a recluse. On a good day he was fun, on a bad day he was absolutely horrible. I suppose it’s made me watch things in a way that I find everything acceptable. Nothing surprises me. People can say or do anything and it’s not going to shock me.’

It’s this observational scrutiny that’s at the heart of Jackson’s photographic practice. She has a fine tuned antenna for what is plausible: a Queen Elizabeth II lookalike is photographed heading to place a bet at William Hill bookmakers with her corgis. The results have the feel of a grabbed paparazzi shot but the method is far from instant. From finding a lookalike that looks like the real deal from at least one angle to spending hours getting the lighting right and studying every detail, there’s no room for error. ‘All of my ideas make it. It’s so expensive to shoot I won’t shoot anything until I’m absolutely sure that’s how I want to do it. I storyboard everything. People think that it’s just a documentary photograph. They don’t realise that I come with a team of people behind me,’ she says. As testament to Jackson’s success, when authentic photos of a naked Prince Harry surfaced in 2012 from a trip to Las Vegas, journalists from all over called thinking they were hers.

Jackson tries to avoid ridicule, more to posit what celebrity is, what observation she has of that person and what she thinks they might be doing behind the curtain. It can get her into trouble. When lawyers warned her not to publish images featuring a U.S. Republican President Donald Trump lookalike with people wearing hoods and robes of the Klu Klux Klan in front of a burning cross, she self-published it in the book PRIVATE (Alison Jackson Publishing Ltd. 2016). When a New York museum refused to exhibit her sculpture of Trump with his trousers down holding the open legs of Miss Universe lying on a table, provoked, Jackson responded by taking a Trump lookalike with models wearing bikinis out to Trump Tower. Additionally, she arranged a protest where women held up placards: Don’t snatch my pussy and Not my President. ‘That was just an incredible experience because the whole street, 5th Avenue, was closed down. Thousands of people came out of nowhere screaming and shouting. I thought they were going to attack Trump but actually all they wanted to do was have a selfie with him, even the Democrats. I’m pretty much akin to New York. I then took the Trump lookalike to Los Angeles and the same thing happened. Cars were stopping on main streets to honk at him when he was on the highway. I followed on my motorbike and directed everything with an earpiece. It’s a bit of a scramble because there were so many people. I never thought it was frightening but of course one of us could be hurt.’

Jackson has resided in London’s Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC) all her adult life and in 2018 was elected as Conservative councillor. As well as representing the posh, she also sits on the family and children’s services scrutiny panel. Jackson invested in a set of cameras and proactively directed photography workshops with a team of talented postgraduate professionals across RBKC in youth clubs and community centres, trusts, and schools to inspire creativity in photography. Jackson founded A Day In Your Life (ADIYL), a community-minded photography competition for aspiring photographers. Using a phone or camera, from five years upwards, anyone who lives, works, studies in RBKC or anyone from anywhere can take a picture of Chelsea to enter.

The 2022 ADIYL private view and prize giving ceremony wasn’t in a dreary community centre or church hall, in typical Jackson style, she threw everything and everyone at it and hosted the show at the world famous Saatchi Gallery. The Mayor and Mayoress stood on stage resplendent in gold chains as a conveyor belt of winners cash and cameras were presented. Radio DJ, TV presenter, and actress Lilah Parsons and former glamour model, Jackie St. Clair posed for pictures under a life size photograph of a screaming teenager. International singer/songwriter Leila Russack postured in an elegant cerise dress next to a photograph of a frog. After a surreal chat with Made in Chelsea reality TV star Ollie Locke, I put down my glass of fizz, walked to the end of the gallery and pulled back the curtain, just to double check it wasn’t being filmed for one big Alison Jackson spoof production.

The 2025 competition is now open for entries HERE