John Heartfield was a 20th-century German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. Heartfield also created book jackets for book authors, such as Upton Sinclair, as well as stage sets for contemporary playwrights, such as Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator.
John Heartfield in 1959
Grave of John Heartfield in Berlin
Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final image may appear as a seamless physical print. A similar method, although one that does not use film, is realized today through image-editing software. This latter technique is referred to by professionals as "compositing", and in casual usage is often called "photoshopping". A composite of related photographs to extend a view of a single scene or subject would not be labeled as a montage, but instead a stitched image or a digital image mosaic.
Photomontage of kiwifruit and lemons, digitally manipulated using GIMP
The Two Ways of Life, a moralistic photo montage of Rejlanders own work, 1857-a choice between vice (at left) and virtue (at right)
Robinson's Fading Away (1858)
Carnival, South End Exhibition Rink, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, February 1899; The carefully prepared photomontage composite was a Notman specialty, each figure being photographed separately and then combined as a single image