PHOTOMONTAGECNTRL X / CNTRL V

WHAT?The art of photomontage could be said to have started just after the First World War, but the manipulation of photographs already had a history going back to the invention of photography in the mid 19th century.

Direct contact printing of objects placed on photographic plates, double exposures, and composite pictures made by darkroom masking were all popular in the Victorian era. Besides this practical use of combination photography, Victorians discovered the amusement to be had from postcards of the wrong head stuck on a different body, or the creation of strange or impossible creatures.

But it was not until the revolutionary times following the "Great War" that artists began to see the use of montage as a truly new art form. The center of this explosion of creativity was Berlin, where a group of artists calling themselves Dada was looking for a new means of expression: one that had more meaning than the prevailing drift into abstraction, but that did not simply return to the traditions of figurative painting.

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HANNAH HOCH

A pioneer in the medium of

photomontage, Hannah Hoch (1889-

1978) was the sole female member of

the Berlin DADA movement and

continued to produce innovative works

well into the 1970s.

Indian Female Dancer - 1930

Shows a women's head pushed back where half of her face is an India statue. Her hair is hidden behind cut out silhouettes of knives and forks shaped like a crown.

Hoch creates an allegory of the modern woman recognized by her trendy hair cut, called a Bubikopf, as she juxtapositions images that in one sense creates a crowned modern woman, but in another identifies her stereotypically as the domestic housewife. The woman's face comes from a photo of a popular actress of the time called Marie Falconetti. Cleverly Hoch creates an image layered with many feminine identities, actress, modern woman, domesticated woman, and woman crowned ready to do battle.

Cut With The Kitchen Knife 1919

Beautiful Girl - 1920

Grotesque- 1963

DADA-Ernst- 1920

Balance- 1925 German Girl

VARVARA STEPANOVA

Varvara Fedorovna Stepanova is rightly

considered to be one of the amazons of

Russian Avant-garde. Vladimir Mayakovsky

has once described her "a frenzied artist", and

indeed her life was a frenzy of creative

activity, including all sorts of experimentation

of new techniques, drawing, painting,

designing. In all that she did she challenged

the accepted and existing, proposed new and

unorthodox ways.

Photomontage "Krasnoarmeitzy" (Red Army Soldiers) for Journal "Za Rubezhom" (Across the Border). 1930. Photography Boris Ignatovitch.

Cover "Itogi Pervoi Pyatiletki: Pyatiletny Plan Vypolnen v Chetyre"(The Results of the First Five-Years: The Five-Year Plan Performed in Four). 1933

Photomontage double-spread from "Itogi Pervoi Pyatiletki: Pyatiletny Plan Vypolnen v Chetyre" (The Results of the First Five-Years: The Five-Year Plan Performed in Four). 1933

Photomontage double-spread from "Itogi Pervoi Pyatiletki: Pyatiletny Plan Vypolnen v Chetyre" (The Results of the First Five-Years: The Five-Year Plan Performed in Four). 1933

JOHN HEARTFIELDJohn Heartfield was a German artist whose politically charged photomontages were banned in his home country during the Nazi regime.

Heartfield was born in 1891 as Helmut Herzfeld. He changed his name in part as a way to protest World War I; he even feigned madness to avoid returning to the service. During the Weimar period he became a member of the Berlin DADA group. He used his collage work as a political medium, incorporating images from the political journals of the day. He edited "Der DADA" and organized the First International DADA Fair in Berlin in 1920.

Sharply critical of the Weimar Republic, Heartfield’s work was banned during the Third Reich, then rediscovered in the Democratic Republic in the late 1950s. Since then, his art has influenced generations of artists and graphic designers.

And yet it moves!1943 This piece refers to a remark made by Galileo when he was forced to deny his belief that the Earth moved around the sun. Upon his release from the Inquisition, he stamped the Earth with his foot and said, "And yet it moves." This image shows that despite Hitler's terror, the world survived.

Adolf the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spouts JunkJuly 17, 1932

Goebbel's ResponseOctober, 1935

Die ArenaFebruary/March 1927 This image of a dancing woman's legs was simply a good graphic for the magazine's cover. This is an excellent example of the advertising capabilities of photomontage.

War and Corpses: The Last Hope of the Rich. Photomontage by Heartfield, 1932.

PETER KENNARD

Peter Kennard has spent most of his life in London, and

has been considerably more involved than most in the

capital's political gatherings during the last 25 years.

As a young artist he was a painter, much influenced by

the "intense and merciless" etchings of Goya. Dissatisfied

with painting's lack of immediacy, he took up

photomontage for its ability to show the "unrevealed truth"

behind the image.

Defended To Death - 1982

Telephone Tapping- 1980

Bloomberg Commission

Peace on Earth

Bankers, Bonus, Peoples, Loss

Fucking Waste of Money

SEAN HILLENSean Hillen was eight years old and

living in Newry when "The Troubles", as

we British are wont to call Northern

Ireland's civil war, started. It says much

for his senses of humour, irony, and

wonderment at the wider world that he

produced a long series of montages

called "Newry Gargarin". Even in this

early work, rooted in the grubby and

mundane, there is something

transcendent about Sean Hillen's

vision.

The Goddess Appears in Newry, Easter 1993

The The Oracle at O'Connell St Bridge, Dublin, IRELANTIS Appears in Newry, Easter 1993

The Great Cliffs of Collage Green, Dublin, IRELANTIS 1997

Sun, Sand and Cement in Temple Bar, IRELANTIS 1997

The Lia Fáil of Waterford, IRELANTIS 1997

An Unfortunate and Impossible Explosion of the core of the THORP reactor, viewed from The Taj Mahal of Carlingford, IRELANTIS 1994

OTHERS

Max Ernst - The Massacre of the Innocents, 1921

Ernst was first a Dadaist, then a Surrealist. This image combines photocollage with superimposed painted figures to create a nightmarish vision of the city. He arrived in Paris in 1922 to participate fully in Surrealism.

Georges Hugnet - Untitled Collage, 1934

Photomontage consists of combining several photographs together for each print. It is an ideal method for unifying unrelated elements producing images that have a dream like quality.

Mari Mahr - from 13 Clues to a Fictitious Crime, 1983

"No real crime has been committed. The recurring face is that of my mother — youthful in a way I only knew her from early photographs. The objects also come from my family -I brought them all with me from Hungary. Thus, with this series I confirmed this new vocabulary for my work."

Manuel Alvarez Bravo - The Good Reputation Sleeping (La buena fama durmiendo), 1939

The provocative juxtapositions of objects as they appear in Alvarez Bravo's photographs may help to explain his appeal to the European Surrealists, drawn to themes of chance and the unconscious. When André Breton, the leader and spokesman for Surrealism in Paris, came to Mexico in 1938, he gravitated toward Alvarez Bravo's work. In a frequently recounted tale, the artist remembers that while waiting in line to receive a paycheck, he was interrupted by a phone call made on behalf of Breton. The caller asked the photographer if he would produce an image for the cover of the catalogue for a forthcoming Surrealist exhibition at Galería de Arte Mexicano. He quickly found the model, bandages, and star cacti that were to become his props for The Good Reputation Sleeping (1939). For many this is the artist's most memorable if not most enigmatic photograph, merging elements of sexuality, the unconscious, danger, and healing. Like many of his photographs, its meaning is open-ended and alluring. Do the thorns symbolize protection of the dreamer or are they the source of her "injuries"?

Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by Peter Blake