picture postcards t o send t o their families.
The implications of photomontage travelled quickly from the radical artistic experiments of the early twentieth century to mainstream graphic communication. Its origins
as an avant-garde artistic activity have been much contested. One account comes from the Dadaist Raoul
Hausmann, who wrote in Courrier Dada: "I also needed a for this technique, and in agreement with George
John Heartfield, Johannes Baader, and Hannah Hoch, we decided to call these works photomontages. This term
translates our aversion at playing the artist, and, thinking
of ourselves as engineers (hence our preference for workmen's overalls) we meant to construct, to assemble
[montieren] our works." (Translated by Dawn Ades, in
Photomontage, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976.)
The "invention" of photomontage as described above that i t was perceived as a revolutionary break rrom the preoccupations with authorship traditionally associated with the fine arts. This idea gains poignancy
when we consider that Hausmann was writing during World War I. In his description photomontage was an
extension of collage, the activity of pasting together ready- made images to create a new pictorial reality, as practised by Braque and other Cubists and Futurists before
By 1918, in war-torn Europe, many artists wished to
align themselves with the working class and to advocate artistic and political revolution. In this changed context,
photomontage, derived from a machine-made image, was deemed more appropriate than collage, as a way of taking the industrial into the world of art. At first dismissed as absurdist images, many Dadaist photomontages appear to have been serious reflections on the impact of war.
Injustice, social upheaval, feminism and revolutionary politics were all addressed, as the work of Hannah Hoch, who, like Hausmann, was active in Dada in Berlin, reveals.
After the initial period of Dadaist experiment, photomontage was adapted to construct more systematic images of utopian societies, particularly in revolutionary Soviet Union. Avoiding past artistic languages, which in their view were contaminated by their association with Tsarist Russia, Soviet designers such as Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky (see and Alexander Rodchenko (see
turned to photomontage instead.
John Heartfield, another member of the Berlin Dada group, also adapted his original style of photomontage as absurd disruption to mount a systematic attack on the growing power of the National Socialist Party in Germany during the and German by birth, Heartfield anglicized his name, Herzfelde, in protest at his country's belligerence during World War I. He continued his political activities during the Weimar Republic of using photomontage "as a weapon of the class war". He moved from Cubist and Futurist arrangement of images, which suggested chaotic simultaneity, to a more programmatic
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and many other Soviet Constructivist designers turned to photomontage in the early in the belief that i t represented a new democratic language. Lenin is shown striding across a modern world.
arrangement o f elements t o create numerous designs for book and magazine covers as well as posters. Heartfield's most remarkable series were his covers for the workers' weekly illustrated magazine Arbeiter Zeitung. From t o 1938 he contributed over 200 photographic covers in which he exposed National Socialist policies, using models, enacted scenes and clever juxtapositions, airbrushed t o appear seamless. Many o f the covers worked following a dialectical principle, inspired by Heartfield's colleague the playwright Bertolt Brecht. According to this, an initial statement is contradicted, often through a montage o f absurd elements that relies on humour or irony, leaving the viewer t o complete the message.
In Europe political photomontage could be used t o celebrate a new society just as much as t o criticize reactionary regimes. At the height o f its popularity, in the late the technique was also the subject o f several
hat ein Reich stark
This photomontage parodies a speech in which Hermann Goering stated: always makes a country strong, butter and lard make people fat,"
exhibitions that stressed its experimental, avant-garde nature, thereby aligning i t t o modernism.
In the United States photomontage took on an extra dimension - for selling goods. It proved a popular and effective way for advertisers t o produce "before and after" shots. In addition, the "magical" properties o f products could be enhanced by dynamic visual styles based on the tricks o f cut and paste. Such techniques became familiar and soon returned t o Europe through advertising agencies, which at the time were growing increasingly international.
During the Great Depression photographers used photomontage in exhibitions and publications, notably for the Farm Security Administration, an agency o f President Roosevelt's "New Deal". The public use o f photomontage continued after the outbreak o f World War when the federal government commissioned large-scale photo-murals t o promote solidarity, patriotism and national unity.
A huge photo-mural in Grand
Central Station, New York, for the Treasury Department shows how the US government used modern techniques of persuasion
as part of the war effort.
Heartfield's design for the weekly communist magazine
carries the legend "Der Sinn der Hitlergrusses: Kleiner Mann bittet um (The meaning of the Hitler salute: a small man asks for large gifts). His clever juxtaposition o f the two figures and a dramatic sense o f scale convey with immediacy the message that campaign was funded by large financial concerns. The motto "Millions Stand Behind Me" adds a further ironic twist.