Photomontage: Between Fragmentation and Reconstruction of Experience

• Authors: Weichert Katarzyna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In the twentieth century, due to the development of mechanical reproduction and press, photomontage became a popular means of communication – popular and diverse in its nature and methods of exploitation (considering press in Germany or in the Soviet Union and individual works of art). It is one of the cultural phenomena related to the change of rhythm of life and a sense of its increased pace, and an impression of fragmentation of reality. This article questions the role of photomontage in such an experience. The said role is complex: sometimes photomontage allows for expression of that experience, and sometimes it is meant to evoke it, in the spirit of modernity; it is both a tool of agitation and critique. In order to answer this question I shall assume the approach of Walter Benjamin, who diagnoses the crisis of experience and the loss of storytelling skills – and describes the potential of photography. This potential is differently approached by artists and scholars who point out contradictory purposes and results of using photomontage. Referring to various works of art shall make it possible to define the tensions characteristic of photomontage. Due to its plasticity and the ambiguity of a photograph, and the potential for (de)contextualization and (de)construction, photomontage can function in a hard to understand, rapidly changing world and address the fragmentation of experience.

Keywords

EN

photomontage; photography; fragmentation; reconstruction; content of experience

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warszawski
• Journal: Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 7-22

Dates

published

2020-04-15

Contributors

author

Weichert Katarzyna

• Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw

References

• Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. https://archive.org/stream/BenjaminWalterTheArcadesProject/Benjamin_Walter_The_Arcades_Project_djvu.txt
• Benjamin, Walter. “The Author as Producer.” In Thinking Photography, edited by Victor Burgin. London: Macmillan Press LTD, 1982. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16716-6_2.
• Benjamin, Walter. “Experience and Poverty.” Translated by Rodney Livingstone. In Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, 731–738. Cambridge, London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
• Benjamin, Walter. “The Handkerchief.” Translated by Rodney Livingstone. In Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, 658–661. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
• Benjamin, Walter. “The Little History of Photography.” Translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter. In Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith, 507–530. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
• Benjamin, Walter. “On the Concept of History.” Translated by Harry Zohn. In Selected Writings, Volume 4: 1938–1940, edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” Translated by Edmund Jephcott and Harry Zohn. In The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, edited by Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, Thomas Y. Levin, 19–55. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: The Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2008.
• Brecht, Bertolt. War Primer. Translated by John Willet. London, New York: Verso, 2017.
• Broomberg, Adam and Olivier Chanarin. “Storytellers.” Interview by Dobromiła Błaszczyk. Contemporary Lynx 2, no. 18, (2018).
• Broomberg, Adam and Olivier Chanarin. War Primer 2. London: MACK, 2011.
• Bush, Lewis. War Primer 3. http://www.lewisbush.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/War-Primer-3.pdf
• Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Translated by Michael Shaw. Theory and History of Literature. Volume 4, edited by Wlad Godzich and Jochen Schulte-Sassep. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
• Czekalski, Stanisław. Awangarda i mit racjonalizacji: Fotomontaż polski okresu dwudziestolecia międzywojennego. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 2000.
• Danto, Arthur. After the End of Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Accessed August 27, 2019. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/danto-art.html
• Didi-Huberman, Georges. Cuando las imágenes toman posición. Translated by Inés Bértolo. Madrid: Antonio Machado Libros, 2008.
• Didi-Huberman, Georges. Images in Spite of All. Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Translated by Shane B. Lillis. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
• Eisenstein, Siergiej, “The Fourth Dimension in Cinema.” In Selected Works. Volume, 1: Writings 1922-34. Edited and translated by Richard Taylor, 181–194. London: BFI Publishing, Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988. https://monoskop.org/images/9/93/Eisenstein_Sergei_Selected_Works_Volume_I_Writings_1922-34.pdf
• Jay, Martin. Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme. Los Angeles, London: University of California Press Berkeley, 2005.
• Markus, Gyorgy. “Walter Benjamin or: The Commodity as Phantasmagoria.” New German Critique: Special Issue on Walter Benjamin, no. 83, (Spring – Summer 2001): 3–42. https://doi.org/10.2307/827788.
• Lavin, Maud. “Photomontage, Mass Culture, and Modernity.” In Montage and Modern Life: 1919–1942, 36–59. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 1992.
• Rampley, Mattew. “Archives of Memory: Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project and Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas.” In The Optic of Walter Benjamin Vol. 3, De-, Dis-, Ex-. Edited by Alex Coles, 94–117. London: Black Dog Publishing, 1999.
• Ricoeur, Paul. “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling.” Critical Inquiry 5, no. 1, Special Issue on Metaphor (Autumn 1978): 143-159. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. https://www.humanities.uci.edu/poeticshistorytheory/user_files/Ricoeur.pdf. https://doi.org/10.1086/447977.
• Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative, Vol. 1. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226713519.001.0001.
• Tupitsyn, Margarita. “From the Politics of Montage to the Montage of Politics.” In Montage and Modern Life: 1919–1942, 82–128. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 1992.
• Warburg, Aby. “Mnemosyne: Introduction.” In Atlas Mnemosyne. Edited by Fernando Checa. Translated by Joaquin Chamorro Mielke, 3–6. Madrid: AKAL, 2010.
• Vogel, Debora. Akacje kwitną. Montaże. Kraków: Austeria, 2006.

Identifiers

DOI

10.14394/eidos.jpc.2020.0002