Photomontage

Thèse de doctorat en histoire de l'art, soutenue le 13 novembre 2020 à l'université Paris Nanterre, sous la direction de Rémi Labrusse et Christian Joschke.

PhD dissertation "Graphic Propaganda : Photomontage in the Visual Culture of the French Left (1925-1939)". Université Paris Nanterre, 2020. Under the supervision of Rémi Labrusse and Christian Joschke.

Cette étude porte sur la place du photomontage dans le graphisme français de l’entre-deux-guerres, plus particulièrement dans la presse illustrée, l’affiche et la propagande politique. Fondé sur la combinaison d’éléments photographiques de façon à créer des images composites, généralement reproduites par impression photomécanique, le photomontage a été promu par les graphistes d’avant-garde mais aussi par les éditeurs de presse à grand tirage. Il devient à partir des années 1920 un élément caractéristique de la culture visuelle moderne, jusqu’à investir très largement les pavillons de l’Exposition internationale de 1937. Si les développements du photomontage en URSS et en Allemagne sont bien connus, la France a souvent été considérée comme réticente à l’usage de ce procédé, privilégiant un modernisme mesuré et un ancrage dans le dessin. En analysant le rôle des réseaux culturels communistes dans le développement du photomontage politique, nous identifions des phénomènes de transferts culturels étroitement liés à la sociabilité militante. L’étude de la production imprimée des organisations de gauche permet d’expliciter les fonctions attribuées à l’image comme moyen d’influence politique. Sur le plan iconographique, les photomontages se caractérisent par des procédés rhétoriques qui orientent la lecture du document photographique. Sur le plan du montage, s’opère une conjonction de temporalités hétérogènes. En prêtant une attention particulière à la fois aux conditions de production, aux réseaux d’acteurs et aux discours de légitimation, nous proposons un essai en iconologie politique qui en même temps se situe au plus près de la matérialité des images.

This study examines the place of photomontage in French graphic design between the two world wars, particularly in the illustrated press, posters and political propaganda. Based on the combination of photographic elements to create composite images, generally reproduced by photomechanical printing, photomontage was promoted by avant-garde graphic designers but also by editors of large-circulation magazines. From the 1920s onwards, it became a characteristic element of modern visual culture, until it was widely used in the pavilions of the 1937 Exposition internationale in Paris. While the developments of photomontage in the USSR and Germany are well known, France was often considered to be reluctant to this technique, favouring instead a measured modernism and drawn illustrations. By analysing the role of communist cultural networks in the development of political photomontage, we identify phenomena of cultural transfer closely related to militant sociability. The study of the printed production of left-wing organisations makes it possible to clarify the functions attributed to the image as a means of political influence. On the iconographic level, photomontages are characterised by rhetorical processes which guide the reading of the photographic document. On the level of montage, they allow for a conjunction of heterogeneous temporalities in a single image. By paying attention to the conditions of production, to the networks of actors and to the discourses of legitimation, this essay in political iconology remains as close as possible to the materiality of images.

Edited by Patrick Elliott, Senior Curator of Modern Art at the Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh, 'Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage' was published on the occasion of the largest exhibition survey ever dedicated to the practice of collage-making, exploring examples of cut and paste practices from the 17th century to the present.

Yuval Etgar's essay in this publication, titled 'On Edge: Collage Tactics and Terminology', is an attempt to map a broad range of terms and techniques employed by collage artists of the twentieth century. Other essays include Freya Gowrley's 'Collage Before Modernism' and Patrick Elliott's 'Collage Over the Centuries'

This interview was conducted via e-mail in late January and early February 2021, during England’s third national COVID-19-related lockdown. It focuses on Beech’s recent photographic montage work, which he exhibited at the Exeter Phoenix in December 2020, as well as the connections between his current practice and research.

Published in 2004, this essay focuses on the communist-activist artist Alice Lex-Nerlinger who, working during the closing years of the Weimar Republic, created works ranging from subtle photomontages that were reproduced in Werner Gräff's Es kommt der neue Fotograf! to didactic stencils intended to be mass-reproduced on photo paper. With her images she fought for such causes as workers’ rights, anti militarism, and the elimination of the Weimar constitution’s notorious paragraph 218, the anti abortion clause. Working during the late 1920s and early 1930s along with other members of the activist artists group Die Abstrakten, Lex-Nerlinger sought to use art as a weapon but would ultimately be silenced by National Socialism.

The most violent of the forces of globalization, imperialist colonization – whether as military, economic or cultural invasion – has provided the subject for American artist Martha Rosler's critiques and projects over the course of nearly fifty years of artistic practice. This article provides an original account of the significance of Rosler's return, during the American ‘war on terror’ in the 2000s, to her previous anti-war photomontage series, originally produced in the 1960s and 1970s during the American war in Vietnam, entitled Bringing the War Home. Through a critical examination of the concept of the reboot as operative within both the Bush administration's policies and the meta-critique of such policies which Rosler's activist art strategies deploy, this article situates these photomontages within the artist's overall practice, particularly her work appropriating popular cultural forms, formats or artefacts, as well as her work critiquing forms of American military imperialism, especially in Chile.

At their most basic, the cinematic imaginary and the photographic fact help explain how specific techniques or even individual artworks could be viewed as quintessentially cinematic in the interwar period and archetypally photographic after the War.
The interwar and post-WWII avant- gardes were possessed by media whose direct products were virtually absent. In the 1920s, avant-garde films were rarities even as the avant-garde cinematic imaginary reigned supreme. The 1960s and ’70s avant-gardes marshaled photography everywhere and produced photographs (as such) nowhere.

Elcott, Noam M. "The Cinematic Imaginary and the Photographic Fact: Media as Models for 20th Century Art." PhotoResearcher, no. 29 (2018): 7-23.

Sabine T. Kriebel's Revolutionary Beauty is the most thorough study to date of the Communist photomontage artist John Heartfield's work for the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ) in the late 1920s and 1930s. Kriebel analyses Heartfield's production through the frame of 'suture' , a concept she derives from film theory. She argues that Heartfield's work at once stimulated collective solidarity at the same time as it cultivated habits of visual suspicion and active political thinking in ways that may not have always coincided with official Communist aesthetic doctrine. Although Kriebel's approach yields many valuable insights, there is nonetheless a danger that her theory of subject-formation may preclude a more critical understanding of representative politics as a form of mediation.

Breve analisi dell'opera di Marianne Brandt (1893-1983) relativa alla produzione di fotomontaggi, in particolare alla luce delle esperienze conseguite presso il Bauhaus, al fianco del maestro Moholy-Nagy e in relazione allo sguardo critico dell'autrice.

The aim of this paper, is to examine the work of renowded artist-shows a critical attitude during period of Hitler, John Heartfield’s photomontage through semiotic methods. In our approach, the period will be discussed in the context of sociopolitical manner by using written and visual codes of John Heartfield, his process of semantic message to ironize the Nazi policy is intended to illuminate.

Эта книга о том, как фотомонтаж стал одним из самых востребованных жанров в середине 1920-х годов. Соединив в себе документальность (фотографии) и артистизм (фотомонтера), он предложил новый взгляд на реальность: взгляд, в котором разно-родность вещей усиливалась их разно-видностью.
Используя фотомонтаж в качестве основного примера, книга прослеживает возникновение оптического поворота и формирование новой «культуры глаза» в первые пятнадцать лет после Октябрьской революции.

Оглавление
Слова признательности 6
Заострение зрительного нерва 9
Монтаж: искусство кройки и клейки 21
Оптический поворот: аэроплан вместо крестика 49
Изоопыты с забытым оружием 81
«Правда» в картинках 99
Два отца советского фотомонтажа 115
Авангард упрощенного реализма: дети о Ленине 139
Ленинский путь: от вождя к образу 179
Короткий сказ про один квадрат 201
Подпись? Событие? Контекст? 211
Смотреть всей головой: вместо послесловия 235
Примечания 251
Общий список иллюстраций 283
Список литературы 295
Именной указатель 319
Предметный указатель 323

In this essay, I explore the way in which the Dadaists used photomontage to critique the politics of the Weimar Republic, focusing on John Heartfield and George Grosz's photomontage on the cover of 'Everyone His Own Football', and Hannah Höch's 'Dada Panorama' and 'Heads of State'. In particular, I explore the way in which these artists used elements of femininity and techniques of feminization to accomplish a witty but sharp political critique.

"Working in Germany in the interwar era, John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld, 1891–1968) developed an innovative method of appropriating and reusing photographs to powerful political effect. A pioneer of modern photomontage, he assembled images that transformed the meaning of the mass-media photos from which they were taken. In John Heartfield and the Agitated Image, Andrés Mario Zervigón explores this crucial period in the life and work of this brilliant, radical artist whose desire to disclose the truth obscured by the mainstream press and the propaganda of politicians made him a de facto prosecutor of Germany’s visual culture.

Zervigón charts the evolution of Heartfield’s photomontage from an act of antiwar resistance into a formalized and widely disseminated political art in the Weimar Republic, when his work appeared on everything from campaign posters to book covers. He explains how Heartfield’s engagement with montage arose from dissatisfaction with photography’s capacity to represent the modern world, and the result was likely the most important combination of avant-garde art and politics in the twentieth century. A rare look at Heartfield’s early and middle years as an artist and designer, this book provides a new understanding of photography’s role at this critical juncture in history."

This thesis is a catalogue raisonné of El Lissitzky’s The Constructor (Self-Portrait). El Lissitzky’s The Constructor (Self-Portrait) is an iconic photograph of the Russian avant-garde. While historians have recognized the photograph has variants, none have attempted to compile a comprehensive inventory. Based on publications, museum catalogue records, auction catalogue records, email correspondence, and for 2 prints, in-person analysis, this thesis catalogues the 3 negatives, 53 prints, 9 reproductions, and 15 documents that relate to the photograph. Chapter 1 describes a precursory Self-Portrait. Chapter 2 describes elements used in The Constructor (Self-Portrait) and is broken down into 4 sections: self-portrait, hand with compass, self-portrait with hand and compass, and letterhead. Chapter 3 describes The Constructor (Self-Portrait) and breaks its variants down into 8 distinct batches.

Some time around the year 1930, the increasingly famous Dutch artist César Domela-Nieuwenhuis set to work designing a brochure (prospekt in German) for the port of Hamburg.1 The photomontage Hamburg, Germany’s Gateway to the World (Hamburg, Deutschlands Tor zur Welt; fig. 1), now in the Thomas Walther Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, reportedly graced the cover of what was essentially intended to be promotional literature for the large north German city. This fact would already make Domela’s work noteworthy, given that it neatly rep- resents the move of many fine artists from the isolation of their bohemian garrets to the popular realm of advertising, where they could disseminate the fruit of their avant- garde experimentation to vast audiences. But even more striking is the montage’s size and quality, characteristics suggesting that Domela intended this enlarged version
to be placed in an exhibition venue, where the piercing eyes of critics, as well as everyday gallery-goers, could inspect the work carefully. Hamburg is, in other words, most likely
a showpiece produced by one of the era’s leading advocates of photomontage in the realization of a high-end commis- sion. As such, the object demands careful attention.

Il volume ricostruisce l’influenza dello sperimentalismo tipografico futurista sul fotomontaggio dada, indagando la progressiva trasformazione del frammento alfabetico in immagine nelle ricerche delle prime avanguardie e la loro rilettura nel contesto centro-est-europeo della neue Typographie. Dalle tavole parolibere alla Lautgedicht, dalle poesie-manifesto ai primi fotomontaggi, si analizza il ruolo della tipografia nell’affermazione di due postulati della cultura artistica novecentesca: l’uso della parola come forma e il valore del procedimento come significato dell’opera. Una cronologia, commentata da materiali fotografici e documentari, offre inoltre al lettore uno strumento di esegesi in sinergia con il testo critico ponendo particolare attenzione alle testimonianze dei dadaisti nel quadro della neo- avanguardia.

“No hay proyecto que valga sin emoción”
Antonio Damasio
“Es inevitable que cada generación haga con la muerte cualquier cosa que considere necesaria para lograr su propia tranquilidad mental”
Carl Becker

La investigación que se propone nace de una experiencia autobiográfica y se ocupa de la creación artística originada en el dolor de la perdida. Específicamente se trata de indagar en las fuentes culturales más relevantes, que han sublimado y dado sentido históricamente, al misterio de la muerte y duelo en Occidente. Por otro lado, es un intento de ampliar estos horizontes contrastándolos con otras maneras de vivenciar la muerte, a través de las manifestaciones de culturas cuyas celebraciones y rituales vinculados a la muerte son reconocidos como verdaderos íconos estéticos de la cultura como es el caso de Mexico, y enriquecemos nuestra perspectiva a través de la revisión del quehacer artístico de autores contemporáneos que han trabajado con la muerte y el duelo ahondando en su problemática humana. Apoyándonos en las ideas del filosofo Peter Sloterdijk, para quien el duelo es un profundo problema existencial que solo puede encontrar una expresion de su magnitud por medio del lenguaje mitológico, nos iniciamos en la posibilidad de una reconstrucción interna, teniendo como eje principal la memoria autobiográfica amenazada por el caos del sin sentido. Esto mediante la observación de cómo culturalmente el dolor puede dar lugar a un proceso de transición espiritual y de sublimación por medio del ritual como obra artística. Así, la propuesta de este proyecto es mostrar la transformación del desgarro de la muerte del otro, como emoción universal, mediante un proceso de investigación y creación fotográfica, que nos permita reconocer diversas formas colectivas de asumir este evento y específicamente, de convertirlo tanto en ritual como en objeto artístico.

Google Maps’ satellite view of the Earth brings together photography and cartography to create an image that is deeply political. Despite the image’s ubiquity it remains without designation or theoretical framework. This essay seeks to situate Google Maps’ satellite view and will argue that the underlying cartographic projection combined with digital photography creates a representation that is potent and problematic yet somehow invisible.

Word – Picture – Sound. Literature and Visual Arts
in the Polish Avant-garde 1918-1939


The book presents an extensive analysis of the main variants of the relation between literature and visual arts in the Polish avant-garde works and theories of art. The framework of the study is the concept of modernism in a broad sense. One of the crucial elements of such an understanding of the term is the role of intersemiotic experiments.
The first part of the book focuses on the works of Tytus Czyżewski who was both a member of the group of futurist poets and the group of painters called “Formiści”. One of the main problems discussed here is whether Czyżewski was really, as it is sometimes claimed, a “bilingual” avant-gardist who managed to create parallel works of comparably high quality in two artistic codes – those of literature and fine arts. The study examines several typographical works combining pictures and words, and aims to define the artistic method of Czyżewski, which I call “słowografia” (“wordgraphy”). A part of the analysis is devoted to the problem of collage in literature and visual arts. I also investigate the compositional and semantic parallels between the paintings and poems of Czyżewski, referring to formism, symbolism, Art Nouveau, surrealism, “national style” and the case of specific, dada-like “kompozycje wielopłaszczyznowe” (“multi-surface compositions”).
The study continues with the description of the theoretical and artistic legacy of two cooperating avant-gardists, members of the group “a. r.”, which was open both to men of letters and visual artists. I explore similarities between the ideas and works of a poet Julian Przyboś and a painter Władysław Strzemiński, and investigate the controversial issue of identyfing unism (strict formula for abstract painting introduced by Strzemiński) within literary structures. I also discuss different ways of constructivist visualisation of poetry in Strzemiński’s typographical interpretation of Przyboś’s volume of poetry entitled Sponad. The analysis reveals some features of Strzemiński’s work that have not been noticed yet e.g. its closeness to postwar concrete poetry. What is more, I confront Strzeminski’s practice with his own theory of typography and, by contrast, with the works of another Polish constructivist, Mieczysław Szczuka. The study also raises the problem of the relation between the work of art and the comment of its author. The last  issue is the contemporary reception of the avant-garde experiments in the field of poetry and typography.
The third part of the book is devoted to the works of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson. I analyse avant-garde films of the couple in the light of modernist visual arts and, to some extent, literature. The most detailed analysis focuses on two works, which, as I claim, can be viewed as closely linked to poetry: Europa (and its postwar reconstruction) and The Eye and the Ear. I examine the problem of cinematographic visualisation of metaphors and some other figures of speech. Moreover, I present the Themersons’ art of typography (including book illustration) done for their publishing house Gaberbocchus Press and the early experiments in typography in books for children written by Stefan and illustrated by Franciszka.
I do not seek one general formula that would enable the examination of all types of intersemiotic connections. On the contrary, I am convinced that each example of theoretical or practical relations between different arts and artists working in different fields (especially in the modernist era) requires a separate detailed investigation. My aim is to present a wide range of interwar interactions between literature and visual arts, which seems to be one of the most significant ways of describing Polish modernism.

Tempo, Tempo! is the first scholarly examination of the diverse corpus of powerful photomontages that Marianne Brandt created in interwar Paris and at the Bauhaus. Rooted in the Bauhaus project of engaging mass-produced visual cultures, Brandt’s montages served not only as a culturally-critical pendant to the sleek, practical metal designs for which she is better known; they also provided a model for confronting radical changes in gendered ideals in the wake of the First World War and addressing dynamic shifts in the visual fields of architecture, advertising and film. Bringing together images of Brandt’s 45 extant photomontages for the first time, the book explores this artist’s embrace of the dynamism of the modern metropolis and her engagement with pictorial theories of Bauhaus colleagues Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy.

Tempo, Tempo! was written to accompany the exhibition of the same name that was shown at the Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum of Design in Berlin (Oct. 2005–Jan. 2006), Harvard University’s Busch-Reisinger Museum (March–May 2006) and the International Center of Photography in New York (June–Aug. 2006). This volume was supported by a generous publication grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

This chapter addresses the theoretical and ideological development of the
so-called ‘machine art’, which was outlined in 1922 in a homonymous manifesto by the painters Ivo Pannaggi and Vinicio Paladini and launched later that year in a revised version signed by Enrico Prampolini. While scholars have largely tackled the thematic specificity and visual impact of this text within the general development of Italian Futurist art in the course of the 1920s, they have failed to take up the issue of its specific place in the ongoing construction of the European artistic framework of the 1920s. This essay aims to redefine the history of the concept of Futurist machine art from a different perspective, by highlighting its complex and contradictory relations with contemporary artistic practices in Europe and with the emergence of Constructivism.

The essay explores the influence of Futurist graphic design in the emergence of the so-called 'New Typography' (neue Typographie), analysing in particular the expressive importance of blank spaces in avant-garde typography. An outline of Marinetti's proposal concerning Futurist typography introduces the study starting with his embryonic experiments dated 1891 focused on the space of the page on which he was writing. El Lissitzky's theories about the visual effect of the words are then examined compared with László Moholy-Nagy's contemporary research on the physicality of writing. The essay concludes with the technical studies of Jan Tschichold, who traced the historic role of blank and unprinted spaces in the birth of modern typography, thus acknowledging the typographic meaning of the container of writing.

This thesis focuses on how photomontage has been used by certain artists during periods of political unrest and artistic revolution. For the purposes of this study, “photomontage” is defined as any artwork into which a photograph is collaged in order to construct a political narrative. The photograph(s) may come from the mass media, or it can be privately created. This thesis is concerned with more than photomontage as a means of creating overtly political art, however. Specifically, Chapter One provides a general overview of the artwork  and writing of the most politically motivated of the Dadas in Berlin, with particular attention to the work of Heartfield. Chapter Two examines the differing styles and goals of Hannah Höch versus the other Berlin Dadas, including Raoul Hausmann, with whom she worked closely from 1915 until 1922. Chapter Three is given to Kurt Schwitters, whose strong opinions about mixing art and politics provide a useful foil to the prevailing attitudes among his fellows. The final chapter considers photomontage as practiced by Martha Rosler in her “Bringing the War Home” works.

Word – Picture – Sound. Literature and Visual Arts
in the Polish Avant-garde 1918-1939


The book presents an extensive analysis of the main variants of the relation between literature and visual arts in the Polish avant-garde works and theories of art. The framework of the study is the concept of modernism in a broad sense. One of the crucial elements of such an understanding of the term is the role of intersemiotic experiments.
The first part of the book focuses on the works of Tytus Czyżewski who was both a member of the group of futurist poets and the group of painters called “Formiści”. One of the main problems discussed here is whether Czyżewski was really, as it is sometimes claimed, a “bilingual” avant-gardist who managed to create parallel works of comparably high quality in two artistic codes – those of literature and fine arts. The study examines several typographical works combining pictures and words, and aims to define the artistic method of Czyżewski, which I call “słowografia” (“wordgraphy”). A part of the analysis is devoted to the problem of collage in literature and visual arts. I also investigate the compositional and semantic parallels between the paintings and poems of Czyżewski, referring to formism, symbolism, Art Nouveau, surrealism, “national style” and the case of specific, dada-like “kompozycje wielopłaszczyznowe” (“multi-surface compositions”).
The study continues with the description of the theoretical and artistic legacy of two cooperating avant-gardists, members of the group “a. r.”, which was open both to men of letters and visual artists. I explore similarities between the ideas and works of a poet Julian Przyboś and a painter Władysław Strzemiński, and investigate the controversial issue of identyfing unism (strict formula for abstract painting introduced by Strzemiński) within literary structures. I also discuss different ways of constructivist visualisation of poetry in Strzemiński’s typographical interpretation of Przyboś’s volume of poetry entitled Sponad. The analysis reveals some features of Strzemiński’s work that have not been noticed yet e.g. its closeness to postwar concrete poetry. What is more, I confront Strzeminski’s practice with his own theory of typography and, by contrast, with the works of another Polish constructivist, Mieczysław Szczuka. The study also raises the problem of the relation between the work of art and the comment of its author. The last  issue is the contemporary reception of the avant-garde experiments in the field of poetry and typography.
The third part of the book is devoted to the works of Franciszka and Stefan Themerson. I analyse avant-garde films of the couple in the light of modernist visual arts and, to some extent, literature. The most detailed analysis focuses on two works, which, as I claim, can be viewed as closely linked to poetry: Europa (and its postwar reconstruction) and The Eye and the Ear. I examine the problem of cinematographic visualisation of metaphors and some other figures of speech. Moreover, I present the Themersons’ art of typography (including book illustration) done for their publishing house Gaberbocchus Press and the early experiments in typography in books for children written by Stefan and illustrated by Franciszka.
I do not seek one general formula that would enable the examination of all types of intersemiotic connections. On the contrary, I am convinced that each example of theoretical or practical relations between different arts and artists working in different fields (especially in the modernist era) requires a separate detailed investigation. My aim is to present a wide range of interwar interactions between literature and visual arts, which seems to be one of the most significant ways of describing Polish modernism.

Using the well-known work of the artist Hannah Höch (b.1889 d.1978, German) as a springboard for discussions about the experiences of the German ‘Neue Frau’ (New Woman), this thesis will explore and unveil the work of other artists who explored similar themes or had similar experiences to further contribute to revisionist feminist and LGBT art history. 
Utilising a collection of primary sources in addition to secondary sources and existing research to explore the contents of artworks, placing them within a social-historical context. The artworks will also be discussed and placed within the wider framework of visual culture via comparisons with the covers and content of lesbian weekly magazine Die Freundin.
Weimar Germany, Berlin in particular, was known for being a hotbed of liberalism. They offered women unprecedented freedoms within Europe; this was expressed through access to work and women’s participation in politics as well as through a brand of modernity and style unique in the city, women’s dress influenced and was influenced by urbanity through a fashionable osmosis. Part of the style was an appropriation of typically male styling: women took up traditionally male pass times and sported shorn hair; shirts and smoking were just some of the monikers of the Neu Frau.
In the lesbian and transsexual communities too, with thanks to the social liberalism of the city and the influence of research from sexologists presented in public papers, were also afforded greater freedom of expression. Even within these ‘subversive’ groups however the entrenched power paradigms of archetypical gender dynamics infiltrated and were translated into hierarchies of dress code and typecasting and rating women based on how apparent their ‘male attributes’ were.
Why was the ‘Mannweib’ (translation: virago- ‘a woman of masculine strength or spirit’) so adorned? Was this an expression of ‘learned misogyny’ within the queer community? How did the lesbian press support and squash preconceived ideas about sexuality and gender identity?
This thesis will therefore examine Höch, with her celebration of femininity in the context of her artistic peers to investigate whether they confirmed or cracked down on sexism and preconceptions about womanhood in their artworks.

At the beginning of her career, Hannah Höch encapsulates Dada. Eventually, however, she moves on to subvert Dadaist principles, using the quintessential Dadaist technique of photomontage to create art, rather than Dadaist anti-art, a paradigm shift which corresponds to similar changes in her personal relationships.

While Josef Albers is a well-recognised figure in twentieth century art, his photographic work remains an understudied aspect of his achievements. This dissertation focuses on seventy photocollages that Albers produced at the Bauhaus in the early 1930s. It offers a new understanding of these works by arguing that Albers’s artistic and life philosophies — most often exposed in his teaching and talks — provide a meaningful lens through which to view them. This dissertation posits that an understanding of the artist’s beliefs, along with a close look at the context in which he produced this body of work, not only sheds light on the photocollages’ thematic material, but also serves to illuminate the artist’s relation to photography. The first chapter demonstrates that an analysis of the underlying principles of Albers’s pedagogical exercises and his commitment to the founding ideal of the Bauhaus can illuminate how the photocollages manifest and substantiate these convictions. The second chapter offers an examination of Albers’s perceptive and cognitive theories and argues that, placed within the context of photographic “objectivity” in Weimar Germany, they provide a revealing frame of reference to understand Albers’s ambivalent relation to the photographic medium. Consequently, this chapter exposes the ways in which the works express photographic doubt, and through a close analysis of their seriality and incompleteness, demonstrates how they provide an alternative to common habits of photographic seeing and knowing.

Why Reality?
'In an era where shock experiences have become the norm of city life, Benjamin refers to montage as the strategy that fit the mission of the medium best, in this vein, he prefers constructed reality over the plain realism that photography is usually expected to provide, and he argues that details of structures are more suited to the camera than 'soulful portraits'.  Henry Bond, 2013
Social Reality in this essay is a term used to describe Marxist notions of truth, presented via visual means. Reality, fidelity to truth, empowerment and propaganda are the mainstays of these discussions and this collection of writing will try to mediate political bias and bourgeois subjectivity to present a well argued and considered response to the question: How best do we depict a true Social Reality to the proletariat of Weimar Germany?
As any historian knows most sources are heavily biased, and as Plato and many after him have argued perception of truth is an entirely subjective experience.
Looking briefly to Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’, about a cave where prisoners are kept from birth in a state of disempowerment. All day and night shadows on the wall of their prison are cast from the light of the sun and a fire and all they know are these projections of ‘reality’: life outside the cave is simplified to shadows on the wall. They take the shadows for truth, and understand the world through this mode. Here Plato mocks the ignorance of unquestioning society, the people of the cave represent people who believe they can know the world merely through what they see and hear.

In the part two of the play Plato examines the small societies’ quest for knowledge (or lack thereof): ‘Socrates: And if someone even forced him to look into the glare of the fire, would his eyes not hurt him, and would he not then turn away and flee [back] to that which he is capable of looking at?’  What he was saying here is that, as with water, the masses tend to take the path of least resistance and seek comfort in their false but ‘known’ world.
One prisoner escapes and comes to know the truth of the world, they learn the way of the sun, and of the true forms through a campaign of curiosity and returns to the cave to liberate the others. This character is representative of philosophy: ‘Socrates: And now, I responded, consider this: If this person who had gotten out of the cave were to go back down again and sit in the same place as before, would he not find in that case, coming suddenly out of the sunlight, that his eyes were filled with darkness?  Glaucon: Yes, very much so.‘  The homecoming results in the escapee being seen as quite ludicrous, their eyes flushed with the light they cannot continue to take pleasure in merely knowing simple forms.
It is my proposition that photomontage, the amalgamation of many images to form a new meaning, or the combination of image and text, are the modes of art making best suited to illuminating the cave and liberating its people in the face of an abstract but powerful dark propagandistic force of first the German state at war and then the fascist National Socialist party.  Photomontage, in its unique position as a medium which collects ‘empirical’ materials from the state presses and reorganises them to unveil an enlightened realism de-establishes propagandist notions and then uses them as a weapon is a transcendent and pithy reaction to the issues presented by technology and power.
'In essence Lukács conceived realism as a given form, one that was at odds with all varieties of Modernism... Only a 'true' realism, based on example of the great realists of the past, could penetrate the contradictions of modern capitalism... Brecht on the other hand, though agreeing that realism was the key issue for modern art, and agreeing too that Marxism provided the basis of an adequate approach to the problem, argued that it was not so much an achieved form as something that had to be won and re-won in new conditions.’ Paul Wood, 1993
This collection of essays intend to examine the notion of empirical reality through an exploration of the history of photography, and the mediums complicated possession of power to illicit largely un-querying belief from the viewer despite a contentious history regarding manipulation and montage. This defence of photomontage, as a vanguard of truth, will be explored in relation to the Communist Party’s artist groups and also in relation to acclaimed Marxist philosophers Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács and Walter Benjamin. The rich dialogue between these esteemed thinkers is (thankfully) well recorded and they provide an inquisitive discourse on the nature of truth, reality and class empowerment. They all ruminated extensively upon truth, seeking a demonstration of reality that is both suitable for and sufficiently inspirational or exposing of a dark truth to work as a mobilising force for the proletariat.  As this exploration draws to a close it will question the distinct power that technology possessed in relation to both deconstructing art and democratising in a conversation with Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
These questions will hopefully compliment and convince the reader of my proposition that in Weimar Germany photomontage was the most powerful truth-seeking medium. In turn this conclusion will then hopefully provide some answers on how to seek reality today…

This paper discusses the theoretical premises of the intersection of poetry and photography within the hybrid form of the photopoetry book, characteristic of the historical avant-garde’s artistic experiments. Surveying relevant theoretical accounts from Baudelaire to contemporary literature and media scholarship (Matei Calinescu, Pericle Lewis, Patricia McBride, Pavle Levi), the author provides a short comparative history of similar multimedia artworks across European cultures and their respective avant-garde movements (German expressionism, Russian Futurism and Constructivism, French Cubism and Surrealism, Czech avant-garde). The author’s concluding remarks propose the theoretical explication of photopoetry books as avant-garde cine-dispositives.

Fotografska slika je imala zadatak da vizuelno dokumentuje
utopističku tezu da se socijalističkim preobražajem privrede i društva, preobražava čovek, a postupci „montiranja“ bili su neophodni i na dohvat ruke u jugoslovenskoj monumentalnoj ideološkoj radionici u kojoj se rađao vrli novi svet.