Ades Photomontage

Introduction to the history of photomontage as an artistic practice.

The book by Don Ades serves as an accessible yet sufficiently detailed introduction to the history of photomontage as an artistic practice since the first edition was published in 1976. This translation is made from the third edition, published in 2021 with authorial additions and clarifications. Don Ades clearly outlines the context in which—at the crossroads of photography, cinema, press, politics, and avant-garde art during a time when all these fields were undergoing turbulent transformations—photomontage attracted the attention of artists as a means of visual expression. The rise of photomontage between the two world wars is examined in detail, when it became one of the most important mediums of Dadaism, Surrealism, and early Soviet engaged art. Its specific rhetoric, developed by artists such as Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Gustav Klucis, was taken up by the nonconformists of the second half of the 20th century, whose work is also addressed in the book. The text is accompanied by numerous illustrations that create a broad and impressive panorama of activist art, effectively operating not only on the cultural but also on the political scene.