As Raoul Hausmann said, "We called process 'photomontage,' because it embodied our refusal to play the part of the artist. Photomontage would become a dominant technique within the Berlin Dada movement, redefining the very role of the modern artist (as the Dadaists saw it at least). Though these commercial efforts were intended to create a seamless illusion, Höch used the technique rather to draw attention to the absurdities and inequalities of modern German society. Hannah Höch, meanwhile, explained how she and her partner Raoul Hausmann came to adopt the idea, not from Heartfield or Grosz, but "from a trick of the official photographers of the Prussian army regiments used to have elaborate oleo-lithographed mounts, representing a group of uniformed men with a barracks or a landscape in the background then inserted photographic portraits of the faces of their customers, generally coloring them later by hand". (Not without a little conceit) George Grosz reflected that "When John Heartfield and I invented photomontage in my South End studio at five o'clock on a May morning in 1916, neither of us had any inkling of its great possibilities, nor of the thorny yet successful road it was to take". These postcards, very often hand-tinted, would have an impact on the development of photomontage within the Berlin Dada movement which steered a path away from this false narrative tradition towards something much more self-reflexive.ĭada artists are usually credited with pioneering the use of "non-narrative" photomontage. By the beginning of World War I, more sober images in Robinson's sentimental/illusionist style gained in commercial popularity as photographers across Europe produced postcards showing soldiers departing for battle with their loved ones waving them off. These tended to take the form of novelty postcards featuring the wrong head stuck on the wrong human body, or even a human head placed on the body of a creature. Though Rejlander and Robinson aspired to the status of fine artists, many less distinguished photomontages came to fruition during the same period. The image belongs to what Robinson called his " Pre-Raphaelite phase" in which he sought to manufacture timeless moments in a gothic setting. His most famous composite print, Fading Away, depicted a young woman's final moments with her loved ones in attendance. Like Rejlander, Henry Peach Robinson started out in portraiture, and, like Rejlander, he was considered one of the most influential photographers of late nineteenth century. That objection notwithstanding, the print was a success and helped secure Rejlander's admission into the Royal Photographic Society of London. Showing two boys being offered guidance by the patriarch, the print initially caused controversy for its partial nudity. His famous Two Ways of Life (1857) combined over thirty images in a single photograph to create a moralistic allegory contrasting a life of sin with one of virtue. Rejlander started working in portraiture, but he also created notorious "erotic" artworks featuring circus models and child prostitutes. The first commercial photomontages were produced during the mid-Victorian era when the practice was given the name "combination printing" by Oscar Gustave Rejlander, a self-appointed artist in this new field. Since a photograph was regarded as the record of truth, however, his approach attracted controversy amongst the photographic community who did not warm to the blatant misrepresentation of reality. The idea of the composite image was thought to have been first proposed by the French photographer Hippolyte Bayard who wanted to produce a balanced image in which the subject was superimposed on a background that brought the two together in an idealized setting.
Photomontage first emerged in the mid-1850s as experimental photographers aspired to create images that could rank alongside fine art.