Quite a few people collect old movie stills, postcards, and book and magazine illustrations, but John Stezaker doesn't stop there. Out of remnants of the past, he makes art.

Stezaker's collages skew toward the bizarre and are capable of putting viewers off balance. But during a recent visit to St. Louis for the opening of an exhibition at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the Englishman said he doesn't think of himself as a conceptual artist.

"I think I'm an anti-conceptual artist," Stezaker said with a smile. "And my major influences are people whom I regard as anti-conceptual, like Joseph Cornell, Giorgio de Chirico and Max Ernst."

All three artists are associated with Surrealism, which is known for its fantastic or incongruous imagery. A popular example is René Magritte's painting "The Son of Man," in which the face of a dapperly dressed man is largely obscured by a green apple.

"Surrealism, for me, is the only 20th-century art that is dedicated to the image," Stezaker said. "Pretty well all the others are dedicated to ideas."

"John Stezaker," which is on view through April 23 at the Kemper, is the first U.S. museum exhibition of his work. The timing of the career-spanning survey, which includes more than 100 pieces, is fortuitous: Stezaker, who lives in London, was shortlisted for the prestigious Deutsche Börse Prize, which is awarded to a living artist who has made a significant contribution to photography in Europe. The winner, who also receives about $47,000, will be announced in April.

"That was a surprise to me, because I'm not a photographer," Stezaker said. "I don't know what to make of it, really. But I'm very flattered and honored."

After a long period during which his work was neglected, Stezaker, who emerged on the British art scene in the 1970s, has been rediscovered. In a review of his "Moving Portraits" show last year at London's Whitechapel Gallery, the Observer newspaper said "his juxtapositions are anything but seamless … precisely so that the eye is confronted by obvious disunities that the mind must somehow resolve."

Stezaker is well aware that he's in his second act as an artist. He had settled into life as a teacher.

"I made the big mistake of showing work before I was ready, and I paid the consequences," he said. "Twenty or 30 years of total obscurity. But not exhibiting, and working purely for myself, I think strengthened what I was doing. I had a feeling that the work was important enough to eventually be recognized."

As the Kemper show illustrates, Stezaker playfully upends the assumptions that we bring to images in the pop-cultural ether.

"Untitled" (1977) depicts a man, a woman and her reflection, and a piano. She's on the left, the keyboard is in the center, and he's on the right. It's all quite disorienting until you realize that the picture is upside down.

In "She (Film Portrait Collage) XI" (2008), the right side of one woman's face is crookedly aligned with another woman's left, in a cutup effect that recalls the work of Pablo Picasso and Romare Bearden. Could the designer of that eerie Ryan Gosling/George Clooney poster for "The Ides of March" be an admirer of Stezaker's work?

"The Story III" (2006) juxtaposes an earnest family scene — Dad seems to be unburdening himself to Mom and Junior — with a more joyous occasion involving a man engaged in conversation with three women. Also present in that scene is at least one other figure, who provides the body for Junior's head.

In "Kiss" (1979), a couple hold each other close, but the image is framed so that their heads are cut off. The effect is much the same as in photographer Nan Goldin's "The Hug, NYC," which leaves faces to the imagination, focusing instead on a woman's back and the muscular arm around her waist. In both cases, the moment is all the more intriguing for what is left unseen.

Stezaker said that he's been fascinated with making collages since he was a child.

"I've always been collecting images," he said. But one experience in particular was an epiphany.

"When I first encountered Ernst's 'Une Semaine de Bonté,' which he called a 'collage novel,' it was like a revelation. I realized that was how I had to work."

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 'John Stezaker'

When • Through April 23; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday, Wednesday-Thursday and Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday

Where • Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, Skinker and Forsyth boulevards

How much • Free

More info • 314-935-4523 or kempermuseum.wustl.edu