Collage and photomontage

Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining two or more photographs into a new image.

Hannah Höch

Hannah Hoch was a prominent female artist within the Dada movement in Germany after WWI.

Cut with the kitchen knife through the last Weimar beer-belly cultural epoch in Germany

This is a colour photomontage of people, text and machinery. Pieces from different magazines, newspapers are cut and pasted on the paper. It is very busy collage with a lot of detail and many different pieces. The centre of the image is one of the foremost German expressionist artists Kathe Kollowitz and the body of dancer Niddi Impekoven. However gaze keeps going from one corner to the other. Everything in this image is important.


Photomontage “Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany” reflected her views of the political and social issues that arose during this transitional time in German society. This photmontage is a machinery of government of culture.


Artist was thinking about the role of women in society by placing her own portrait at the bottom of the image. It is placed near the map, which shows in which countries in Europe women had voting rights.  Pieces of machine are exploding throughout the montage to symbolize booming industry and culture within an urban area. Hnnah Hoch captures political chaos that was going on in Germany after World War I. 

Linder

Linder, Pretty Girl Series 1977

It is a more simple photomontage comparing with Hannah Hoch. There is just two pictures in this collage. The punctum of this image is naked girl sitting on the table with teapot instead of her face. Artist in series Pretty Girls used pictures of women from pin-up magazines.  

The work is intended as a challenge to both the sexuality and domesticity of women and as an attack on conventional female roles and representation. Women in this series is represented as an item. Women's head is transformed into teapot - which could be understood as a symbol of her domestic enslavement – into a sexy weapon.

Even though as I mentioned before this montage is not that busy it still captures relevant and important that time issues.

Annegret Soltau

Personal identity, beginning in 2003

It is a colour photomontage by Annegret Soltau. The punctum of this image is women's portrait with stitched credit card instead of face. 

'Personal identity' is a running project that started in 2003. Artist examines the question of personal identity in the age of digital information. Our self is saved in digital information such as SIM cards, birth certificates, credit cards, etc. By searching for biographical traces Annegret Soltau combines self-portraits with original sew-in documents. 

Nowadays information about us is saved in digital format. Documents that we use every day without thinking can tell a lot information about us. They tell more about the person that our actual face. I believe that this series of photomontage is relevent in these days.