The picture is composed of different photographs, presumably previously published in a newspaper or magazine. It appears that the original photographs would have been manipulated (cut-out, cropped, blown-up) for the purpose of Heartfield’s work.
Composition
It is a black and white photomontage depicting two figures, a large figure of an unidentifiable man takes up a third of the picture plane on the left and a small figure of Hitler is almost pushed into the right corner of the lower part of the cover. Both figures are cut off at some point by the edges of the picture. The face of the larger man, presumably a businessman, is almost completely cut off, except for a small lower portion which suggests that the man, whose identity is concealed, looks down on Hitler as he discreetly hands him banknotes.
Hitler's Salute
Hitler faces away from the man, his gaze directed outside the picture’s space. His typical pose, an iconic image familiar to German public through its presence in mass media, suggests that he is addressing an audience. His hand, raised in the gesture of salute, extends towards the anonymous figure and is positioned as if ready to receive the money.
The viewer is led to follow a flowing curve outlining the individual elements as it descends from the man through the wad of banknotes and downward to the figure of Hitler, diagonally dividing the picture. In this interplay of concealed and revealed elements, it is the money which stands at the centre of the composition, halfway between the hidden identity of the paymaster and the imagined audience.
Both, the businessman and the public are represented indirectly but their presence is there: the man as the large dark mass looming over the pictorial space and the public as an abstract entity outside it. The only clearly identifiable elements are the money and the Leader.
Parody of the Fascist Propaganda
In the original cover, the construction of the composition is reinforced by political slogans filling the void areas. These slogans are an integral part of the picture. The most notable of these texts, a slogan used in the Fascist propaganda, is positioned between the two figures and near the lower edge of the photomontage. The slogan reads ‘Millionen Stehen Hinter Mir’, the claim promoted by the National Socialists keen to demonstrate that the public supports Hitler.
In the context of Heartfield’s photomontage, however, the sentence ‘Millions Stand Behind Me’ assumes a completely different role. The text inserted between the figures brings the symbols of money and the politics together to form a new meaning through this triple juxtaposition of the picture’s elements. This specific configuration of familiar images and texts generates a new reading.
Mass Media Imagery in Photomontage
Heartfield reduced the composition to black and white photographs and also eliminated any unnecessary details that might interfere with what he intended to convey and what impact he wanted his work to make. By combining the references known from the contemporary mass media with simplicity and clarity and austerity of pictorial components, he might have anticipated that the public would be able to draw their own conclusions.
This is not a mere photographic record of a real event. Bertold Brecht was convinced that a simple reproduction of reality cannot convey a deeper significance of that reality. The techniques of photomontage could achieve more powerful effects because its medium specificity allows for associations that extend beyond the capacity of a conventional photograph.
The audience is required to engage with the principle of construction of a photomontage. Thus, an image of a businessman can be made into a fat dark background puppet master and a likeness of a political leader into a puppet manipulated by a string of money. Photomontage transformed realities of life into attention-grabbing manifestations of profane illumination.
Sources:
- Steve Edwards and Paul Wood: Art of the Avant-Gardes, Yale University Press, 2004
Zuzana Minarikova - I live in London and work in publishing in Bloomsbury which is an exciting part of London, full of museums, galleries, bookshops and ...
