Suzy Lee

A surreal and quite scary monochrome interpretation of 'Alice in Wonderland' by Suzy Lee was originally published in Italy in 2002. This book has a dramatic, theatrical feeling created using a combination of photographs, collage and illustration. Masks, mirrors and smoke screens, it looks like a magic show where the audience will be persuaded to believing many strange things. This book reminds me of Sarah Moon's haunting interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood in it's frightening altered reality.

"The book 'Alice in Wonderland' was made when I was staying in London few years ago. During my staying in London, I happened to see Lewis Carroll’s manuscript of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and John Tenniel’s original illustrations at the British Library, and this made me reread this all-time favorite classic. Rereading the Alice book as a grown-up reader was very intriguing: the nightmarish atmosphere and eccentric characters of the story fascinated me. Lewis Carroll’s Alice book is such an abundant resource, which evokes many issues in multifarious ways."

 "I tried to produce a book that reflects upon subject matters like constructed illusions and realities and the dream-within-a-dream structure, which contains a circular regression and self-reflexivity. Like the epitaph of Lewis Carroll, Is all our life, then, but a dream?, these themes have been one of the eternal pending questions for us, and especially for the artists, who, in my opinion, are dealing with visual matters. I may say that Lewis Caroll’s book appealed to me in terms of illuminating the relationship between illusion and reality." Suzie Lee