The British artist John Stezaker, a teacher at both Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, has made disquieting photo collages for over 40 years, work that went largely unnoticed. Born in Worcester, England, in 1949, he studied art at London’s Slade School, where he was admittedly “antisocial.” Stezaker loved collecting images, and he began collaging vintage photographs in a surreal manner. In the mid-2000s, he was finally discovered by the art world, the collector Charles Saatchi leading the way. There were those who criticized Stezaker for tampering with photographs. “I have to be that vandal,” he responded. “There has to be a violence, a sacrifice is involved.” This exhibition at Gray highlights Stezaker’s landscapes, which invoke Britain’s history of empire. He produces diverse scenes of a lost era, what he calls “spatial betweens,” with images sourced from 19th-century travel books. —Maggie Turner