Dada vs Photomontage
ダダ / フォトモンタージュ
Dada comes from Avant-garde and Photomontage from Photographic Techniques. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Dada
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Deliberately dislocates meaning and order, making authority itself the material of the joke.
Photomontage
Cuts and rejoins photographic fragments, assembling relations and critical meanings that never existed in the original reality.
| Dada | Photomontage | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1916–1920s | 1910s– |
| Family | Avant-garde | Photographic Techniques |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Rotated type / Fragments of sound / Collisions of scale / Unbalanced margins | Cut-out photographs / Mixed scales / Visible seams / Reused print matter |
| Best used for | Cultural events and statements that doubt common sense · Making voice, noise and collision come before meaning | Turning political or advertising rhetoric against itself with its own pictures · Showing scenes and relations that never existed with the force of photography |
| Type | Collide weights, directions and cases in one plane | Cut headlines from existing print and paste them at unmatched sizes |
| Composition | Keep one reading path; rotate and sever the rest | Shift scale on purpose, putting small figures beside enormous objects |
| Material | Letterpress black, red, off-white; bind the accidents with repetition | Magazine and newspaper cuttings, paste, rephotography, seams kept or hidden |
| Caution | Not decorative messiness. Decide which authority or custom you are objecting to. | Copying only the cutting and pasting leaves fragments side by side with no collision, and the criticism the method existed for never lands. |