ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that especially Eisenstein’s intellectual montage that acted as models for the Russian photomontage artists who aimed to achieve similar effects of clear articulation of meaning in their photomontages beyond 1925. It explores the nature of Eisenstein’s and Vertov’s film montages and explains, with plenty of evidence, how their techniques influenced the Russian avant-garde photomontage artists after 1925 and through the end of the 1920s. Eisenstein’s collaboration with Meyerhold and his work at the Proletkult Theatre were instrumental in shaping his theory of the montage of attractions, claimed David Bordwell. Central to Eisenstein’s concept of montage, seen as a semiotic intermodality, is the idea that images interact in a discursive manner, which usually characterizes the interaction of words. Moholy-Nagy and John Heartfield also reached the model of homogeneous meaning formation in their photomontages under the influence of the medium of film, mainly their own film experiments, as it will become apparent.
