John Heartfield's Political Photomontage
Collage Technique a Forerunner of Photoshop and Digital Manipulation
Oct 28, 2009
John Heartfield worked in Germany and Czechoslovakia between the two world wars. His photomontage artworks were political in nature. To this end he developed a unique method of appropriating and reusing photographs.
In an agitated time of great uncertainty, Heartfield's photmontaged images reflected the chaos Germany experienced in the 1920s and '30s. The Nazis used the media. Opposing parties clashed about politics in the press, at the ballot box, and on the streets. This exposure and utility meant that Heartfield's images helped transform photomontage into a powerful form of mass communication.
The Development of Photomontage
It is explained on the Getty Museum Website, that Photomontage is the process of creating collage by compositing photographic images by cutting and joining. Before digital software such as Adobe Photoshop was created to make the process more streamlined and easier to manage; the work was often rephotographed to convert it back into a seamless photographic print.
Many artists still work in a variety of similar ways, creating collages on canvas and paper. Today modern graphic artists and digital painters use programmes such as Photoshop. Images are scanned and filed onto a memory stick. Here they can then be filed for use in combinations and compositions. They can be loaded into Photoshop or other graphic software so that a process of "compositing" is facilitated digitally. After manipulation, seamless reconstructions from the images are produced as a final artistic statement.
Another way for early artists to create a photomontage was to combine negatives during darkroom, development processes. The resultant image was a seamless and unified reproducible artwork.
John Heartfield’s Unique Photomontage
In 1932, Heartfield created the image Adolf, the Superman, Swallows Gold and Spouts Tin. To do this, he overlaid a widely published photograph of Hitler with a chest X-ray of a male chest filled with a stack of coins. The print made reference to the large contributions that wealthy industrialists were making to the Nazi Party. (National Socialist German Worker's Party) This was despite its alleged basis in socialism. Heartfield's ironic, social commentary spoke of the contradictions between Hitler's financial support and his workingman rhetoric.
The versatility of the montage meant that it could be reproduced easily. Having made such a strong impact, the Superman, Swallows Gold and Spouts Tin was reproduced as a leftist political poster in 1932.
According to the Getty Museum Website the politically motivated artist’s work had its roots in the Dada movement. The Dada movement was born of a group of artists who embraced an aesthetic of chaos to reflect the devastation of World War I Europe.
Today many artists use the power of Photoshop to capture similar kinds of statements, often for advertising or graphic arts purposes. At the same time other artists, like to dabble with the older fashioned kinds of collage creation. These artists are often experimenting within the field of Fine Arts.
Resource:
Graham.B.Directions In Art. Digital Media. Harcourt Ed. Oxford. 2003 (This book provides an overview of artistic developments within the field of Digital Art .)
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