Dada refers to an avant-garde movement born in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.
Dada treated the photograph not as evidence of reality or a beautiful print but as material to be cut, pasted, and made to work politically. Photomontage turned mass-reproduced media images into instruments of critique.
Dada's contribution to photography was the discovery that the photograph is not a window onto reality but a piece of printed paper that can be cut, combined, and reframed — transforming mass-media images into instruments of political critique.
Dada refers to an avant-garde movement born in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.*1
On this site, photographers connected to Dada appear mainly in 1910–1920s, often overlapping with Surrealism and Rayograph / Photogram.*2
Dada often overlaps with Surrealism and Rayograph / Photogram. Reading those pages together makes it easier to see where method, institution, or critical language begins to diverge.*4
American-born artist who worked at the heart of Dada and Surrealism in Paris. Through Rayographs, solarisation and fashion photography, he transformed photography from a …
Born in Gotha, Germany, in 1889, Hannah Höch was a Berlin Dada artist who cut photographs from newspapers, magazines, and advertisements and reassembled bodies, machines, words …
Born in Schmargendorf near Berlin in 1891, John Heartfield cut and recombined press photographs, portraits of politicians, and advertising text into political photomontages …
Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1897, Erwin Blumenfeld moved from Dada collage into nudes, portraiture, fashion, and color photography while working in Amsterdam, Paris, and New …
Sources — museums, archives, and specialist literature (listed individually in § SRC on this page)
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