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Background information
"The question of the title is a rhetorical one: there is no contradiction between montage or fake news. This is a disturbing thought in view of political photomontages by John HEARTFIELD (1891-1969) and today's political situation, where right-wing thought and action are a real threat.
Content
Edited by Angela Lammert, 'Photomontage or Fake News. From Heartfield to Twitter' examines photomontage as an (art) form of political interference and influence: does the re-location of the classical montage process in visual art, film, music and theater in relation to its current revenants in the age of social media have anything to do with lost utopias and utopias that need to be reactivated? Even in its pioneering days, the technique of photomontage-generally understood as cutting up and assembling existing photographs published in the mass media-was a practice of mise-en-scène that incorporated newly made photographs, retouching, and overpainting. In view of digital images and their medial mediation, can we speak of the farewell of photomontage as a historical technique? Or does the formal principle of deconstruction and construction continue with expanded technical means? How have the mechanisms of action and circulation of images changed? What new artistic forms can have an enlightening effect in our affect-laden societies? Have increasingly rampant memes become the viral montage medium of today? What role do images of terror, for example in propaganda videos of the so-called Islamic State, play into the immediate present? What is there to remember and interrogate?" (© Steidl Verlag, 2021)
About the participating photographers
John HEARTFIELD, Adam BROOMBERG & Oliver CHANARIN
Photo books of the participating photographers
- BROOMBERG & CHANARIN
HEARTFIELD, John