Contents
| This theme includes example sections and will be revised and added to as we proceed. Suggestions for additions, improvements and the correction of factual errors are always appreciated.
Status: Collect > Document > Analyse > Improve |
Introduction
829.01 Photomontage > Collage - Defined
                
A collage is made by placing different elements together on a flat surface. In this the photograph is only one of the possibilities and the final collage might include text, clippings, graphics and fabric. The term photocollage is used when photographs are the dominant elements of the overall collage.
Widely used in graphic design and advertising this technique has sporadically flourished for political propaganda - most notably in the period between the First World War (1914-1918) and the rise of Fascism in Weimar Germany with John Heartfield and Hannah Höch and in Russia with Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky. Political collage from 1970 onwards has emerged as a means of forcing home a message with maximum impact and the German artist Klaus Staeck was influential in this with a prodigious output including his 1971 book Pornografie that attacked the twisted attitudes and hypocrisy of society.
Photographers:
Wallace Berman,
Victor Burgin,
Paul Citroen,
Nancy Goldring,
John Heartfield,
Hannah Höch,
Gustav Klutsis,
El Lissitzky,
László Moholy-Nagy,
Alexander Rodchenko,
Klaus Staeck,
Edmund Teske,
Piet Zwart
Decorated album pages
829.02 Photomontage > Decorated pages in nineteenth century photograph albums
                            
829.03 Photomontage > Frances Carlhian: Album page showing the Shah of Persia - Nasir al-Din Shah
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
829.04 Photomontage > Lady Mary Georgiana Filmer: Decorated album pages
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
     
Spirit photography
829.05 Photomontage > Cottingley Fairies
   
Two films Photographing Fairies (1997) and FairyTale: A True Story (1997) have been loosely based upon the 1912 Cottingley Fairies Hoax.
829.06 Photomontage > William H. Mumler: Spirit photography
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
    
William H. Mummler (1832-1884) was one of American's great spirit photographers and also a considerable fraud. At the time of national grieving for the terrible losses of the American Civil War (1861-1865) he took photographs of people with departed relatives. The most famous of these is his portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln, the wife of Abraham Lincoln, sitting with the departed President standing behind her with his hand affectionately resting on her shoulder. In April 1869 he was tried for fraud and P.T. Barnum testified against him and had the noted New York photographer Abraham Bogardus created a fake to show how it could be done.
"Spiritual Photography", 1869, The Living Age, vol. 102, p. 314-315 gives an account of the trial of Mummler taken from The Saturday Review:
The celebrated Barnum was called among other witnesses for the prosecution, and he stated that he had devoted a portion of his life to the detection of humbugs. About seven years ago Mr. Barnum was composing a book on humbugs, and he wrote to Mr. Mumler that he wished to purchase specimens of his so-called spirit photographs for the Museum of humbugs established by him, Barnum. Spirit photographs were accordingly supplied by Mr. Mumler at two dollars apiece, and they were hung by Mr. Barnum on the walls of the Museum for three or four years. Among them were spirit photographs of Napoleon Bonaparte and Henry Clay, and the positions of the figures were exactly like the well-known engravings of these personages. The title of Mr. Barnum's book was The Humbugs of the World. All the chapter relating to spirit photographs, referred to Mr. Mumler, who does not seem to have objected to the celebrity thus bestowed upon him. The spirit photographs which were hung upon the walls of Mr. Barnum's Museum were labelled " humbug," and the compliment thus conveyed was not repudiated by Mr. Mumler. (p. 315)
829.07 Photomontage > William Hope: Spirit photography and séances
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
    
Metropolis
829.08 Photomontage > Paul Citroen: Metropolis
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
In 1923 the German artist Paul Citroen (1896-1903), who was a friend of the Berlin Dadaists, put together a collage made up of postcards and printed illustrations and called it Metropolis it's an abstract design of different buildings and perspectives crushed together. This is the most famous of all his work and it has become an iconic image of the 20th century city. The designs for Fritz Lang's 1929 film Metropolis appear to have their foundations in this chaotic image.
Appropriating card photographs
829.09 Photomontage > Bohumil Stepan: Satirical photocollages
About this photographer | Photographs by this photographer
      
Bohumil Stepán was a Czech graphic designer who created satirical photocollages in the 1960s using carte de visites and cabinet cards as his starting point. A book of his work Familienalbum. Collagen (Munich, 1971) was published.
829.10 Photomontage > The Whimsical Carte de Visite World of the Carte Horse Conspiracy and Archived Associates...
                                                                  
Between 2002 and 2008 an assortment of American collectors, dealers and secretive individuals with surrealist yearnings and a sense of humour concpired together to create the "Carte Horse Conspiracy" to say that there is an official history of such a group would be pushing the bounds of scholarship but an introduction provided by an anonymous member sets the tone.
Late in 2002, Larry Gottheim of BE-HOLD sent a letter and a page from an auction catalog illustrating an album of photo-collaged cartes-de-visite and cabinet cards done by Bohumil Stepán to a bored horse cart driver.
Almost immediately the Horse Carte Conspiracy formed; the members put things to order and got down to the business of conspiring. Between 2002 and 2008 they mercilessly contrived carte-works.
In 2008 there was a big collision of cartes, horses and drivers and all ended up in a ditch. Their glue sticks, tweezers and tiny scissors were scattered across the countryside
Abigail Snippe
Directress of The Home for Aged Carte Horse Conspirators
and
Curatrix des Cartes. |
829.11 Photomontage > Contemporary artworks using card photographs
    
There are artistic flourishes within those who collect both carte de visite and cabinet cards to use the more common ones as the starting point for artistic exuberence. The first significant person to do this was Czech graphic designer Bohumil Stepán but numerous othes have followed.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
General reading
Hoy, Anne H., 1987, Fabrications: Staged, Altered and Appropriated Photographs, (New York: Abbeville Press) [Δ]
Nakamori, Yasufumi, 2012, Utopia/Dystopia Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage, (Houston: Museum of Fine Arts) isbn-13: 978-0300179606 [With Graham Bader] [Δ]
Nakamori, Yasufumi & Bader, Graham, 2012, Utopia/Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage, (Museum Fine Arts Houston) isbn-10: 030017960X isbn-13: 978-0300179606 [Δ]
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
Llyn Foulkes
Foulkes, Lynn, 1974, Llyn Foulkes: Fifty Paintings, Collages and Prints from Southern California Collections: A Survey Exhibition 1959-1974, (Newport Beach: Newport Harbor Art Museum) [Δ]
Foulkes, Lynn, 1987, Llyn Foulkes: The Sixties, (New York: Kent Fine Art) [EXhibition catalogue. 15 October - 14 November 1987, New York, Kent Fine Art] [Δ]
Knode, Marilu & Brooks, Rosetta, 1995, Llyn Foulkes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, (Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporary Art; Laguna Beach: Laguna Art Museum) [Δ]
Subotnick, Ali, 2013, Llyn Foulkes: A Retrospective, (Prestel) isbn-10: 3791352741 isbn-13: 978-3791352749 [Δ]
Raoul Hausmann
Hausmann, Raoul, 1979, Photographies, 1927–1957, (Paris: Créatis) [Δ]
John Heartfield
Heartfield, John, 1977, Photomontages of the Nazi Period, (New York: Universe Books) [Δ]
Pachnicke, Peter & Honnef, Klaus (eds.), 1992, John Heartfield, (New York: Harry N. Abrams) [Δ]
Robert Heinecken
Borger, I. et al., 1999, Robert Heinecken, Photographist: A Thirty-Five Year Retrospective, (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art) [Δ]
Enyeart, J. (ed.), 1980, Heinecken, (Carmel, CA: The Friends of Photography) [Δ]
Hannah Höch
Lavin, Maud, 1993, Cut with the Kitchen Knife: The Weimar Photomontages of Hannah Höch, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press) [Δ]
Frederick Sommer
Sommer, Frederick, 2005, The Art of Frederick Sommer: Photography, Drawing, Collage, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press) [Δ]
Weiss, John (ed.), 1980, Venus, Jupiter and Mars: The Photographs of Frederick Sommer, (Wilmington, DE: Delaware Art Museum) [Δ]
Bohumil Stepán
Stepán, Bohumil, 1971, Bohumil Stepán: Familienalbum. Collagen, (Munich: dtv) [Δ]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com
Peter Beard (1938-) • Llyn Foulkes (1934-) • Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971) • John Heartfield (1891-1968) • Robert Heinecken (1931-2006) • Hannah Höch (1889-1978) • Frederick Sommer (1905-1999) • Bohumil Stepán (1913-1985) | Home > Themes > Photomontage > Collage
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