Editing Photomontage (section)

==== Heartfield, Grosz, and Dada ====
In 1916, [[John Heartfield]] and [[George Grosz]] experimented with pasting pictures together, a form of art later named "Photomontage.”

George Grosz wrote, "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. As so often happens in life, we had stumbled across a vein of gold without knowing it."<ref name="King2015">{{cite book|last=King|first=David|title=Laughter is a Devastating Weapon|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_swZrgEACAAJ|date=October 2015|publisher=[[Harry N. Abrams]]|isbn=978-1849761840|page=13|access-date=2020-08-02|archive-date=2023-07-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230719180956/https://books.google.com/books?id=_swZrgEACAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/helmut-herzfeld-john-heartfield/heartfield-in-quotes/george-grosz-quotes | title=George Grosz Quote On Photomontage Invention | work=Official John Heartfield Exhibition | access-date=9 January 2017 | archive-date=9 May 2019 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190509041721/https://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/helmut-herzfeld-john-heartfield/heartfield-in-quotes/george-grosz-quotes | url-status=dead }}</ref>

John Heartfield and George Grosz were members of Berlin Club Dada  (1916–1920).<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/german-dada-berlin-dada-art | title=Berlin Club Dada 1916-1920 | work=Official John Heartfield Exhibition | access-date=9 January 2017 | archive-date=10 January 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170110020143/http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/german-dada-berlin-dada-art | url-status=live }}</ref> The German Dadists were instrumental in making montage into a modern art-form. The term "photomontage” became widely known at the end of World War I, around 1918 or 1919.[5]

Heartfield used photomontage extensively in his innovative book dust jackets for the Berlin publishing house Malik-Verlag.<ref name="Zervigon2012">{{cite book|last=Zervigón|first=Andrés|title=John Heartfield and the Agitated Image: Photography, Persuasion, and the Rise of Avant-Garde Photomontage|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6O9dEuv87ysC|date=November 2012|publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]]|isbn=978-0226981789|access-date=2020-08-02|archive-date=2023-07-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230719180957/https://books.google.com/books?id=6O9dEuv87ysC|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/political-dada-art | title=Malik-Verlag Photomontage Book Dust Jackets | work=Official John Heartfield Exhibition | access-date=9 January 2017 | archive-date=10 January 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170110020303/http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/political-dada-art | url-status=live }}</ref> He revolutionized the look of these book covers. Heartfield was the first to use photomontage to tell a “story” from the front cover of the book to the back cover. He also employed groundbreaking typography to enhance the effect.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/heartfield-book-art-1924 | title=John Heartfield Photomontage Book Dust Jackets | work=Official John Heartfield Exhibition | access-date=9 January 2017 | archive-date=10 January 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170110015119/http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/heartfield-book-art-1924 | url-status=live }}</ref>

From 1930 to 1938, John Heartfield used photomontage to create 240 “Photomontages of The Nazi Period”<ref name="Heartfield1997">{{cite book|last=Heartfield|first=John|title=Photomontages of the Nazi Period|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R3JOAAAAYAAJ|date=May 1997|publisher=Universe Books|isbn=0876639546|access-date=2020-08-02|archive-date=2023-07-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230719180954/https://books.google.com/books?id=R3JOAAAAYAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/political-art-posters/heartfield-posters-aiz | title=John Heartfield Photomontages Of The Nazi Period | work=Official John Heartfield Exhibition | access-date=9 January 2017 | archive-date=12 March 2017 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170312080141/http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/political-art-posters/heartfield-posters-aiz | url-status=dead }}</ref> to use art as a weapon against fascism and The Third Reich. The photomontages appeared on street covers all over Berlin on the cover of the widely circulated AIZ magazine published by [[Willi Münzenberg]], Heartfield lived in Berlin until April, 1933, when he escaped to Czechoslovakia after he was targeted for assassination by the SS. Continuing to produce anti-fascist art in Czechoslovakia until 1938, Heartfield's political photomontages earned him the number five position on the Gestapo's Most Wanted List.

[[Hannah Höch]] began experimenting with photomontage in 1918. Höch worked for Ullstein Verlag designing knitting and embroidery patterns that were inspired by her photomontage work of the time.<ref>Maria Makela (1996). "By Design: The Early Work of Hannah Höch in Context". In Boswell, Peter; Makela, Maria; Lanchner, Carolyn (eds.). ''The photomontages of Hannah Höch'' (1. ed.). Minneapolis: Walker Art Center. p. 62. {{ISBN|9780935640526}}.</ref> She continued to work with photomontage for almost the rest of her life, even after she broke from the Berlin Dadaists.

Other major artists who were members of Berlin Club Dada and major exponents of photomontage were [[Kurt Schwitters]], [[Raoul Hausmann]], and [[Johannes Baader]]. Individual photographs combined to create a new subject or visual image proved to be a powerful tool for the Dadists protesting [[World War I]] and the interests that they believed inspired the war. Photomontage survived Dada and was a technique inherited and used by European [[Surrealist]]s such as [[Salvador Dalí]]. Its influence also spread to Japan where avant-garde painter [[Harue Koga]] produced photomontage-style paintings based on images culled from magazines.<ref name="eskolahk">{{cite book|last=Eskola|first=Jack|title=Harue Koga: David Bowie of the Early 20th Century Japanese Art Avant-garde|year=2015|publisher=Kindle, e-book}}</ref> The world's first retrospective show of photomontage was held in Germany in 1931.<ref name="Becker2011">{{cite book|last=Becker|first=Lutz|title=Cut & Paste. European Photomontage 1920–1945|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v9yR186XI9AC&pg=PA13|access-date=5 January 2013|date=2011-11-11|publisher=Gangemi Editore spa|isbn=978-88-492-6515-6|page=13}}</ref> A later term coined in Europe was, "photocollage", which usually referred to large and ambitious works that added [[typography]], brushwork, or even objects stuck to the photomontage.