ABSTRACT
The emergence of photomontage as an artistic technique different from collage must be seen with regard to the type of visual representation photographs generate. The permissiveness regarding the use of media, which characterizes the avant-garde, went beyond traditional media and allowed for collage to be transposed into the newer media of photography and film. Photomontage differs both from the technique of collage and from photocollage. The transfer of the collage principles into the new medium of photography took place when artists became aware that photography directly reflects reality, and they aimed to change a photograph’s meanings by performing certain artistic procedures on it. Since collage is not a medium-specific technique, photomontage triggers only passive intermedial reference to the visual collage. The chapter outlines experimental nature of both heterogeneous and homogeneous Russian photomontages, and refute the claim that only functional and propagandistic purposes determined the nature of their artworks beyond 1925, as both Christina Lodder and Benjamin H. D. Buchloh claimed.
