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What is photomontage?

A photomontage is when you combine two or more images together to create a single picture. Photomontages are usually surreal and are created by cutting and sticking the images or by using software such as Photoshop.

Photomontages where first created to challenge the popular painting as a new art form. The art movement Dadaism was important in making photomontages modern. It was the Dadaists that first coined the phrase “photomontage” in 1919. The dada movement was created to protest the First World War. Dadaists believed that logic and structure is what led people to all-out war. So in their artwork they aimed to promote a sense of chaos and disorder. Such as in this photomontage by Hannah Hoch:

  As you can see this image is clearly disorganised and messy. You can see the techniques she must have used because this art piece was made in 1919, so it was made by hand by cutting and sticking various images together.

Modern technology has made making photomontages easier. It is now possible to combine two or more images into a composite image using software such as Photoshop.  

A photomontage

created in Photoshop.

image by Ben Goossens.

Ben Goossens creates photomontages in a style very similar to the work of Dadaists.

 His work is often dark, nightmarish and surreal.