A Short History of Photomontage II: 1945-2010
It gets harder to trace the lineage of photomontage in the years after the second world war, perhaps partly because the areas influenced by it were so diverse, and the arts world of the post-war period so complex and vibrant.
In the eastern bloc Photomontage remained primarily a medium of political propaganda. Alexander Zhitomirsky was just one of many post-war soviet artists who continued to use it, and his biting images satirising American life were perfect weapons for the hearts and minds battle between socialist east and capitalist west. Zhitomirsky drew parallels between post-war America and Nazi Germany, and depicted sharks and wolves wearing suits on Wall Street. Other works were less visually obvious, but no less loaded with meaning.
The pop art movement of the 1960’s also contributed to the photomontage canon (and raised questions about where the line between photomontage and collage lay). Richard Hamilton combined images from mass media and advertising to produce collage-montages that mocked their own origins as in ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ Photomontage also infiltrated popular culture in less obvious ways, the animations of Monty Python’s Flying Circus and numerous album covers (for example the Beatles ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’) owe something to the aesthetics of earlier photomontage practioners.
As the cold war dragged on and public opinion became increasingly hostile to the idea of nuclear weapons, photomontage reinvented itself again, this time becoming part of the visual language of the campaign for nuclear disarmament. Peter Kennard was central to this renaissance. Images like ‘Defended to Death’ and ‘Protect and Survive’ were published widely and seen at numerous protests. Although clearly the political message in Kennard’s work could only have been that of the 1980’s, his images were also unapologetically the descendents of John Heartfield’s photomontages. One need only compare Heartfield’s ‘The hand has five fingers’ to Kennard’s ‘Crushed’ or Heartfield’s ‘Hurrah the butter is gone’ to Kennard’s ‘Untitled’ to see the way ideas were inherited and referenced.
Today Kennard and some other photomontage artists remain active, attacking the political establishment as they were twenty years ago, but the medium has changed beyond recognition. The atrophy of traditional darkrooms in favour of digital images and software manipulation has changed the aesthetic of photomontage away from scissors and glue, with debatable consequences. One might argue the old aesthetic has been lost, today’s montages are less obviously manipulations, and today the idea of manipulated images has more negative connotations of intentional deception.
The positive side though is that technological innovation has democratised photomontage by reducing the level of technical expertise and equipment needed to produce an image of the quality of those made by Heartfield or Zhitomirsky. A good idea and a computer are perhaps now all that you need. With looming cuts and protests, and politics in the United Kingdom increasingly coming to resemble those of the 1980’s there has never been a better time to begin to cut and paste, or if you prefer, to ctrl+x and ctrl+v.
