Page 93 - Expanded Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 93/146
MOMA has this to say about Hoch: “The technical proficiency and symbolic significance of Höch’s compositions refute any notion that she was an “amateur.” She astutely spliced together photographs or photographic reproductions she cut from popular magazines, illustrated journals, and fashion publications, recontextualizing them in a dynamic and layered style. She noted that ‘there are no limits to the materials available for pictorial collages—above all they can be found in photography, but also in writing and printed matter, even in waste products.’” (MOMA Introduc- tion by Heidi Hirschl Orley, Curatorial Expansion Project Manager) includes quote from Dawn Ades: (“On Collage,” in Hannah Höch, ed. Dawn Ades, Daniel F. Herrmann (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2014)
“Photomontage was not invented, as is frequently claimed, but rather evolved out of a contem- porary need for new forms of expression and combinations of materials. For this reason no one can claim to have been the sole create of the medium.” Cesar Domela-Nieuwenhuis: Fotomontage 1931 (Staatliche Kunstbibliothek - cover below:)
Cesar Domela-Nieuwenhuis: Fotomontage 1931 (Staatliche Kunstbibliothek)
Hannah Hoch: Collage II c1925
https://www.moma.org/interactives/objectphoto/exhibitions/31.html
Collage II (1931) shows Hoch was not ‘just’ a Dadaist - but a formal abstract artist too: structured by the white on black chequered grid, she plays with multi-colour shapes and plain coloured rect- angles... Both collage and photomontage were to become a standard tool of modernism...