What is photo-montage?
Photo-montage is the putting together of multiple pictures in order to create a new image with a completely different feel to what the separate individual images would have created. This is done by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs/images to make it entirely new one. sometimes this can cause the image to look some what like a photogenic print. Now days there is a more popular method of creating the idea of a photo montage and that by using a new application called ‘Photoshop’ do help ‘cut’ and edit the picture together this is known as ‘composting’ and is a more modern term for photo-montage. Although photographers need to be aware that a composite of related photographs to present a scene with all related images or subject is not considered a photo-montage.
What the history behind photo-montage?
In the 1880s was where first merging different photos together became about which was then called ‘combination print” and was most popular in a form of the contrived group portrait. The subjective and bizarre juxtaposition were further looked into by Dadaist and Futurist artists of the early 20th century. Some of the most iconic photo-montages were produced by George Grosz, Hannah Hoch and John Heart field from the being stages of photo-montages being produced. This also came extremely popular and was used extensively during the Pop art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. leading to more technical forms being produced by photographers like Jerry Uelsmann and David Hockney .
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Hannah Hoch
Hannah Hoch born in 1889 on November 1st in Gotha, Germany. Hoch began her training 1912 at the School of Applied Arts in Berlin- Charlottenburg. Here she concentrated on glass design with Harold Bengen, soon to be cut short when the break out of World War 1 began. However returned back to Berlin and began back at Applied Arts in 1915, although changed her specializing in glass design and moved her focus to painting, graphic design, woodcut and linoleum-block-painting with Emil Orlik until 1920. In 1915 she met and became romantically involved with Australian artist Raoul Hausmann, who in 1918 introduced Hoch to Berlin Dad circle, a group of people including George Grosz, Wieland Herzfele and Wieldlands brother John Heartfield. This then lead her to experiment with nonobjective art though painting but also looked into the idea of collage and photo montages. in 1917 is Hosh’s true interest in photo montages properly began. Hoch and Dadaists were the first to fully explore the idea of photo montages. Then in 1934 Hoch was names as a ‘cultural Bolshevist” by the Nazi.In order to continue to make art during World War l she retreated to a cottage in Heiligensee, on the outskirts of Berlin. After World War l Hoch tried extremely hard to stay relevant to the time period and continued to show of her hard work by putting them in exhibits through 1945 and 1946. As she grew and devleloped she worked with new modes of expression but continued to reference her past. Hoch was such a key part of photo montage and was clearly an important influencer during her period of six decades of hard work. Her legacy will obviously continue with her strong contribution to the Dada movement. In the late 1960 and 70s her work began to receive more attention due to the concerted effort by feminist scholars and artists to uncover and reclaim the art created by Hich and other during that particular time period of the 20th century. Hannah Hoch tragically passed away on May 31st in 1978 in West Berlin.
Some of her pieces she produced:
