Photomontage Today: Peter Kennard

This video examines one particular tendency in the history of photomontage, the analysis of the world in political terms. The film is divided into three sections. The first looks at the effect of layout and juxtaposition on the meaning of images. It highlights the difference between the `variety show' of a color magazine and the impact of a John Heartfield montage, or the slaughterhouse scene in The Hour of the Furnaces, in which individual images are made to interact to produce new meanings. The second section examines the mechanics of photomontage construction, and its ability to say more about reality than a simple photograph. The third section considers possible uses for political photomontage, in campaigns, on posters, in books, newspapers and magazines. The video focuses on the work of British photomontagist Peter Kennard, probably best known for his anti-nuclear stance. In each section Kennard talks about his own practice, and shows how some of his photomontages were conceived, constructed and distributed. The film reveals how photomontage can provide a critique of the reality represented in conventional advertising and the media: by unmasking this mediated view of the world it becomes a political act. Kennard's work is discussed in relation to other photomontagists, such as John Heartfield and Hans Staek who have, in their own ways, used the juxtaposition of images to make political statements. Underlying these practices is the conviction that, in order to use images to change lives, you first have to change the images themselves.

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