Photomontage � Tom Knapp � Alex Greenhead � Discourses � � Technical Advancements � – What made photomontage possible? � Realism vs. Illusionism � – Where should it be categorised? � Modernity vs. Historicism � – What stance did it take? � Propaganda and Politics � – What influence did it have? � Elitist vs. Accessibility � � – A new style of art movement? �
Photomontage introduction � Definition � “Photomontage is a kind of collage that is composed primarily of photographs in order to direct the viewer’s mind toward specific connotations. These photographs are glued on a surface.” � http://arthistory.about.com/ � � Background � � • The 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. � � • It was only following the "Great War" that artists began to see the use of photomontage as a truly new art form. The centre of this was Berlin, where a group of artists calling themselves Dada was looking for a new means of expression. � • The politics of the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s helped photomontage to almost a revival as much of the imagery at this time was designed for banners at demonstrations. �
Technical Advancements � Photomontage is constructed of two main technological leaps: � � Combination Printing: This evolved as a response to the problem of overexposure of the sky in landscape photography due to the sensitivity to the blue rays of the spectrum in the silver iodide emulsions used in the mid 19th century. The solution was the use of two different negatives with different exposure times of the same landscape to be combined in one print. � � Gustave ¡Le ¡Gray, ¡The ¡Great ¡Wave, ¡Sete, ¡1957. ¡ • The layering of separate images onto a single photographic print. � Photoshop: Although this • This can be done by careful masking and making of presentation focuses on successive exposures. � the first half of the 20 th century mainly, it is worth • The early combination prints required days of work, pointing out the invention quality equipment, and painstaking methods. � of Photoshop 3.0 and flat- • Eventually they could be mass-produced by letterpress bed scanners in 1994, or lithographic processes. � allowed for far easier • Unlike other art movements, with the filtering down of construction of technology used, it soon became a common practice photomontages of a for those who were interested to delve into their own greater complexity. � photomontages. �
Realism vs. Illusionism � Photomontage is an illusionistic art movement, as many pieces depict fictional scenarios as though they are real. � One advantage of photomontage is that it can be used to juxtapose or overlay images, which could not be seen together in real life, adding a note of surrealism to the finished image. This is popular within the advertising industry to evoke specific moods which could not be achieved with a single image. � � At the time of photomontage being � invented, there was a lot of scandal � when people realised that the phrase ‘the camera never lies’ was not strictly true. Examples of this included fake fairy photographs as well as ‘spirit’ photography, which was of interest to the Victorians wanted to see spirits of the departed as life expectancy was shorter with diseases. Nowadays these photomontages would fool nobody it would seem, but back then many Victorians still believed they were real. �
Modernity vs. Historicism � Photomontage can definitely be seen as a form of Modernism. This is because this movement was making use of contemporary technology and especially when led by the Dada, claimed to reject the past. � � After all, the status quo had just produced the most devastating war in European history, and the artists, who had mostly spent the war years in the safety of neutral Switzerland, returned to Germany desperate to find ways of conveying the madness of the age. � As can be seen from the example images, photomontage often looked this way to highlight the quick changes and disruptions of modern life caused by the social progression that took place after World War I (1914-1918) and the Russian Revolution (1917). � � ¡
Propaganda and Politics Elitism vs. Accessibility � From around 1905, photomontage became one of the best ways in which political parties could communicate their message (propaganda). � � A popular medium for this were postcards, as they were cheap, accessible, could be mass-produced and did not need words for a message, meaning the number of people who could understand them, especially where the population was poor and uneducated, was higher. An example of this is Soviet Russia. � � Photomontage propaganda was used as a way of campaigning for the Russian Revolution and communism as well as campaigning against the ideology of Nazi Germany. �
Dada Propaganda (John Heartfield) � He became a member of the Berlin Dada art movement as a protest to Germany’s current barbaric state and also joined the German Communist Party, developing photomontage into a form of political and artistic representation. � � He used his art to protest the violent, greedy government control by the Nazi party. He took a satirical approach, condemning anti-Semitics and wealthy industrialists who supported the German army and protested the suffering of the many hungry and desolate people during WW II. � 1980’s Propaganda (Peter Kennard) � � • He took up photomontage for its ability to show the "unrevealed truth" behind the image. � • His two major subjects quickly emerged: armaments and poverty which were two hot topics in this decade. � � His belief at this time was that photomontage had the power to show the causes rather than the results. In recent times however, he seems to have had his doubts as now there is so much transformed imagery people accept them without questioning their meaning. �
Teaching Exercise � So for this we thought it would be interesting for you to create some of your own ‘cut and paste’ photomontages with the provided handout. � � As time and equipment are limited, this will more than likely result in some ‘interesting’ approaches… it does not matter if they are jumbled up and look a mess as photomontage often looked this way, to highlight the quick changes and disruptions of modern life caused by the social progression that took place after World War I and the Russian Revolution. � � Examples! �
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