John Heartfield Photography

John Heartfield was an innovator of photomontage in the 1920s and 1930s. He worked in Germany and Czechoslovakia between the two world wars. “The impact of Heartfield's images was so great that they helped transform photomontage into a powerful form of mass communication… Photomontage allowed Heartfield to create loaded and politically contentious images. To compose his works, he chose recognizable press photographs of politicians or events from the mainstream illustrated press. He then disassembled and rearranged these images to radically alter their meaning” (The J. Paul Getty Museum).

The photograph below “was a staged photograph rather than a proper photomontage. To create it, Heartfield covered a mannequin's head with pages from two newspapers, Vorwärts (Forward) and Tempo. As a result, the figure is literally blinded by the prejudices of these newspapers. The blurring at the left reinforces the idea of impaired vision” (The J. Paul Getty Museum).
I feel that this photograph related to my images, foremost because it has symbolic meaning behind it. The way in which the newspapers ‘blind’ the mannequin remind me of my images where the magazine cuttings ‘suffocate’ the women, covering her face completely.  The person in John Heartfield's photograph and the women in my images lose their identity.  There is also a feel of suffocation in his photograph not only from the newspapers covering his face but also from the strap across his chest constricting him.