Hannah Hoch and Photomontage

Hannah Hoch, 1889-1978

Born in 1889 in Gotha, Germany, Anna Therese Johanne Hoch, later be known as Hannah Hoch, studied glass design and graphic arts in Berlin at the College of Arts and Crafts from 1912 to 1914. 

In 1916 she met Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Dada movement. 

The collaboration, and romantic relationship, with Raul Hausmann, led Hannah Hoch to become the only female member of the Berlin Dada movement. 

She worked together with Hausmann for several years, developing the photomontage style and producing collages.

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic, 1919, collage of pasted papers, Staatliche Museen, Berlin

 

The meaning of term "Photomontage" 

The term was associated with the German word "montleren" (trad. "to assemble"). Berlin Dadaist called "montleren" the practice of composing and reassembling pieces of images, drawings and photographs taken from newspapers and magazines of that time. 

In reality, the more correct term to call this practice would have been the one used by the Cubist art movement ("photocollages" or "papiers-colles), but the Dadaists wanted to distinguish themselves from the Cubists, whom they considered representatives of a non-proletarian social class and devoted to formalism.

After the Dada period, the term photomontage assumed the correct meaning of seamless, composite image achieved either by manipulating negatives in the darkroom or rephotographing a collage of photographs. This is the method used, as an example by John Heartfield and the Surrealists.

Hannah Hoch used the "Cubist" term "Klebebild" (glued picture) or "Klebezeichnung" ( glued drawing) to describe her work, and only later the "Dadaist" term "photomontage", but indeed, she never used rephotographing a collage of photographs, preferring the evidence of hand cutting over the creation of works that could be produced repeatedly.

Hannah Höch, Never Keep Both Feet on the Ground,

 1940, Photomontage, 

The work of Hannah Hoch

The work of Hannah Hoch is mainly associated with the period of her belonging to the Dadaist movement in Berlin, and for this reason, there is a tendency to standardize her style and poetics: the Dadaists were against the war, they identified with the proletariat and its claims. 

However, the meaning of Hannah Hoch's work is much more articulated, as can be that of a person who has lived through the two world wars, the two post-war periods of a defeated Germany, the economic-political crisis of the Weimar Republic, , the totally male Dadaists, the ostracism of the Nazis, her stay in Germany against everything and everyone, her period in Holland, the difficult relationship with the men who crossed her life. 

Her claims and her messages are certainly political and feminist, but they start from a more personal perspective than the one of an artistic-political movement and have changed over time.

In this regard, her use of the so-called "Dada kitchen knife" to create her works of the Dadaist period, represents her personal battle against the generally accepted attitude that women's activities should be limited to "Kinder, Kuche and Kirche" (children, kitchen and church ). Hannah Hoch starts from the typical object of the kitchen, the knife, which could also be seen as a symbol of a violent act, to claim her role as a female in a world of males, assigning, with a provocative, satirical, political paradox, to the 'knife' object the role of instrument Dada, named after an artistic movement of males only.

As for her representation technique, this too has changed over time and I wondered if it can be compared to the photographic one of the multi-layer. I think yes, her works are multi-layered, obtained through the composition and overlapping of multiple images and images of texts.