Hannah Höch

Hannah Höch was a famous German DADA artist and is highly recognised as being one of the originators of photomontage during the Weimar period (1918-1933 where Jews, liberals, socialists and others were blamed for undermining war efforts).

She combined text and images from modern media to criticise social constructs for women, popular culture and the failings of the Weimar republic.

Photo analysis:

The collage is built using a photograph from the newspaper of the German president at the time, Friedrich Ebert (pictured on the left) and his Minister of Defense, Gustav Noske (pictured on the right). The two men are wearing their bathing suits in the images and are placed out of context to depict them as foolish.

She placed these figures on top of an embroidery-style background with images of a woman surrounded by flowers and butterflies. She demeans these high-authority figures by placing them on this background, depicting them foolishly. The message sent through this montage is powerful; Höch is criticising the government. In her montage, there’s a lack of colour, Höch puts the figures in a surrealist environment as a way of ridiculing them for avoiding political and financial issues facing the German population at the time.

Jesse Draxler

Jesse Draxler is an modern photomontage artist, born in 1981 in Wisconsin, USA. Many of his images are disturbing to he spectator and Draxler tends to deconstruct the classic idea of beauty through different techniques, either cutting up images digitally, making handmade collages or spilling ink over images in order to entice the viewer and make them wonder what’s beneath. He focuses mainly on editing portraits of people.

Image analysis

Draxler focuses on creating highly contrasting black and white images due to the fact he’s colour-blind and it allows him to express his work freely. He also felt that once he removed colour, his work became more conceptual and allowing for a stronger emotive response from spectators.

The layering of abstract shapes creates a human-like figure, perplexing the viewer. Elements of the original model for the photo are present throughout the image, making the viewer wonder why they’ve been covered. Is it a lack of identity? If so why? Is it the conditioning of society that’s stopping them expressing themselves?

The use of greyscale in the background and throughout the image aids in this questioning, as greyscale creates and maintains a melancholic atmosphere caused by the image. It also helps Draxler to create contours and layer the shapes whilst avoiding clashing that can be caused through coloured images. The lack of warm colours (ie-red and yellow) implies an absence of emotion in the subject, such as happiness and joy.

Layering, Opacity control, Free transform, and blending these images to create a photomontage.

Method

I started by cutting the gun and metal rods out and placing them on a separate layer. I added each image beneath this layer but on top of the background and changed the size using free transform (CTRL+T). I lowered the opacity of each image and erased parts of the photos, where an image from a top layer was present. I chose black and white images and edited the ones that weren’t in order to help with the blending.

An environmental portrait is a portrait of a person taken in their usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, typically highlighting the person’s life and surroundings.

Contextual:

Arnold Newman was an American photographer, well known for his environmental portraits. In 1963, Newman had been asked by the Newsweek magazine to take a portrait of a German industrialist (Alfred Krupp), to which Newman initially declined, due to the fact he was Jewish and Krupp had been a supplier of machinery and railway systems for the Nazis in WWII. Krupp had later been convicted for crimes against humanity and was sentenced for 12 years imprisonment.
When Newman finally accepted the job, having been given the opportunity to get a sense of personal revenge against the Nazis, he had told others that his aim was to make Krupp look like the devil.

Visual:

The visual aspects of the image come together to create an eerie and unnatural effect with the overlying green tint adding to this. Newman focused on the tone of the image, using light to highlight the sides of Krupp’s face, leaving dark shadows underneath his hands and the center of his face, this extreme contrast helped Newman to achieve a sinister portrayal of Krupp. Newman’s placement of Krupp allows him to create depth within the image. In the foreground of the image, Krupp has been framed using two concrete pillars on either side of him. He only takes up around half of the image, leaving the upper half to show his environment.

The smart suit and watch and clasping of Krupp’s hands gives the viewer the impression that Krupp is in control and thriving off of what’s surrounding him. The rustic and industrial-looking architecture aids in the inference that Krupp’s line of work is corrupt and disreputable.

Conceptual:

The conceptual idea behind this was to depict the pure evil Newman saw in Nazis and the people associated with them. Considering Newman was Jewish, his view on extremist Germans was highly pejorative and this image was used to as a method of retaliation from him.

Photomontage was first established in 1915 by the Dadaists as propaganda against the first world war. Dada was an art movement in WWI based in Switzerland and their artwork was usually satirical and ridiculous in its nature, in order to demean the associates of war. Surrealists later embraced the idea of photomontage and used it to bring together different images and text in order to convey their message more efficiently to the viewer. Many artists used it to create a sense of distorted reality as a way of exploring the unconscious mind. 

Photomontage is the process of result of cutting, gluing, layering and rearranging 2 or more photographs to make a complex image. Sometimes, the final result is then photographed so as to make the final print ‘seamless’. 

John Heartfield

Was a well-known, early 20th century photographer who used photomontage and art as a ‘political weapon’. When the war in 1924 broke out, he managed to avoid active service by faking mental illness. He’d destroyed all his artwork from before the war and joined the Berlin Dada club in 1918, which included artists such as Hannah Hoch and Raoul Hausmann. Dada allowed Heartfield to experiment with different materials and ways of expressing his work.

His most famous work was mainly anti-Nazi and anti-fascist . He voiced his political and social views through his photomontages

The occupational shots

The top 10 shots

Ansel Adams

The photographer I chose to edit my images in the style of is Ansel Adams, who was recognised for his monochromatic landscape photos. He tended to use a full tonal range in his photographs, creating striking images such as the ones below.

Adams was an environmentalist, meaning he was passionate about protecting the wildlife and natural environment supporting it. He aimed to encourage the conservation of nature and the wilderness through the use of his camera and the photographs he produced with it, allowing people to see the true beauty of nature.

I like the idea of producing black and white images as it adds a timeless quality to the product. I felt it would be appropriate for this project as the occupation is a huge part of Jersey’s heritage and adds a powerful aspect to the final result.

Editing process

I didn’t change much apart from the colouring of the bunker so as to make the ivy more clear and the gate more defined.

Whilst editing this image of a WWII tunnel I made the cracks and deterioration more defined. I also darkened the tunnel to give the image an eerier vibe.

I cropped the image so as to keep the focus on the concrete pillars and the mill behind it, which had been previously used as a cooling matrix for the German generators. I also increased the clarity and colour of the image and decreased the light intensity as it defines the structures more.

I rotated the image to straighten the coastline, making it centred and showing an accurate view of where the people behind the gun would be aiming.

I cropped some of the foreground out and spot blemished parts of the grass that’s at the front of the shot. I then increased the clarity and decreased light intensity to keep the tower in focus.

I cropped and rotated the image for aesthetic purposes, except I kept the top half of the machine gun port and the wires to show the German propaganda on a bunker wall, which had been common ground for the massacre of enemies.

I decreased the light intensity and slightly rotated the photo to make the text straight and clear, which translates to “We drive against England”

I increased the contrast of the image and the ting slightly to get more definition on the concrete pillars that were used to stop tanks from driving up during the occupation.

I increased the clarity of the image and decreased the light intensity in order to define the middle of the image, displaying the barrel of the gun.

I increased the clarity and the warmth of the image to highlight the erosion present in the bunker door, showing how its been completely neglected after the occupation, due to the emotional attachment to it, which had been pejorative.

Final editing process

Here’s the final development of my images, in the style of Ansel Adams:

Project Evaluation:

This project on the occupation has allowed me to explore the symbolic power photography is capable of. Initially, I mostly began looking at the architectural aspects of bunkers from WWII; However, as I spent more time on the first shoot, I started to notice how something as simple as overgrown plants, rust and cobwebs could be representative of the grief and trauma caused by the occupation in the later years of the war, as it shows how derelict everything from that era (that had been constructed by the Germans) had become. This abandonment really resonated with me and gave me insight into the feelings of the islanders who fell victim to the tyrannical reign of their beloved island.

During the project, I experimented with levels, the depth of my images and took both landscape and portrait photos. I looked at how foreground affects the focus of a photo and began to consider how to change the perspective of an image.

Looking back at the photos I’d taken, if I was to do the project again, I would’ve taken a lot more photos as I hesitated at many of the shoots. I would evaluate my images before moving destination and I would take more time to get everything into focus. I would experiment more with natural light and artificial light to see how that could have changed the mood regarding each image.

I could’ve improved my collection of images by photographing old items and remains from that era or people who lived during that time or monuments with immense sentimental and emotional value as a way to humble the viewer of the image, reminding them of the ultimate torture society went through for those years.

Overall, I’m quite happy with how my project has developed leading to the final image I’ve edited and selected below.

Personally, I feel as though this was the most successful image as it captures Jersey’s beautiful coast behind a mass structure built exclusively for malicious intent. Generally, I believe it allegorically represents how Jersey was occupied and the black and white editing of the image helps to date the gun emplacement back to the era in which the war took place, due to its “timeless quality” I had explored earlier in my research.

I think the way the barrel of the gun is directly in the middle of the image is a key reason why the photo works so well; It allows the viewer to gain the same perspective that a German soldier would have had. It also makes the viewer feel subordinate as the structure the feel like they’re standing behind had the power to carry out hundreds of massacres on Jersey and British allies, which can arouse feelings of grief, despite not actively being there to witness it. The symmetry of the metal bars on either side personally represents the islanders, who were regimented and controlled by Germany as they almost line up like bars of a cage.

The serenity of the sea in the background allows the viewer to see that the photo was not taken during the occupation but creates imagery, as they can picture the vessels that would have been out there, almost creating a sense of nostalgia.