Channel 4’s current affairs strand Dispatches has asked the award winning photographer and filmmaker Alison Jackson to create images to sit alongside a special edition of the programme called Nuclear War Games, about the tense relations between Iran and Israel and the possibility of a military confrontation.
The lookalikes of Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are pictured playing actual games including chess, backgammon, arm wrestling and computer games.
Alison takes figures who look like well-known people and places them in scenarios which often provide an engaging and pertinent commentary on real life situations and the public perception of her subjects.
Nuclear War Games has gained exclusive access to an Israeli ‘war game’, in which an Israeli attack on Iran is played out in detail. It will be broadcast on Channel 4 on November 5th at 8pm.
Alison Jackson said: “This shoot was the perfect example of getting someone who looks nothing like the famous person he is supposed to resemble and turning him into a spitting image. The Ahmadinejad lookalike didn’t even have a beard, but by the beginning of the shoot we had managed to make him look just like the Iranian president.
It’s always fun to put fake celebrities in unlikely situations, but somehow it’s even more fun when politicians are involved. We’re really not used to seeing them with their guards down and acting like normal people. They all take themselves so seriously”
Dispatches: Nuclear War Games will be shown on Channel 4 at 8pm on Monday 5th November
Photo credit Alison Jackson: www.alisonjackson.com
