There will always be an argument over who
invented the word "photomontage". What is not at issue is that it
was one of the members of the Berlin Dada group: the debate is
about which one. This is hardly surprising since much of the early
montage work was the result of collaboration, and many early works
are credited to more than one artist. So the official (and
diplomatic) version is that the five exponents of Dada montage, John
Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Johannes Baader, Raoul
Hausmann, and George Grosz all agreed that their new
art form required a new name (to distinguish it from the painterly
collage of the Cubists.)
Dada was always about kicking out against
the status quo. After all, the status quo had just produced the
most devastating war in European history, and the artists, who had
mostly spent the war years in the safety of neutral Switzerland,
returned to Germany desperate to find ways of conveying the madness
of the age. One early Dada exhibition was held in a men's public
toilet, and visitors were given an axe to destroy the exhibits: it
was never a movement much concerned with commercialism or
posterity!
"Montage" in German means "fitting" or
"assembly line" and "monteur" means "mechanic" or "engineer". John
Heartfield, the best known practitioner of montage who used to work
in overalls, came to be known as Monteur Heartfield, in recognition
of his attitude to the world of art. Hannah Höch, who uniquely
continued to produce montages throughout her long and varied life,
said: 
"Our whole purpose was
to integrate objects from the world of machines and industry into
the world of art."
Many of the earliest Dada montages were
used as covers and illustrations for magazines and manifestos of
the movement. Their style was usually wildly anarchic, utilising
many elements, some of which inevitably included photos of the Dada
artists, juxtaposed with much apparently random newspaper text.
From these initial experiments, the major figures in Dada
photomontage emerged with vastly different styles and
agendas.
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