An important (and the only female) member of the Berlin Dada group,
Hannah Höch was a pioneer in photomontage. In her deft hands, images taken from
popular and fashion magazines were collaged together to create radical work
that struck a balance between humor and poetic beauty. Höch was part of a
generation of German artists for whom the explosion of World War I shattered
the status quo of everyday life, imbuing them with a political consciousness of
the changing world that rose from the ashes. She claimed to have discovered
photomontage in the cut-and-paste photographs that soldiers on the front sent
home to their families, and it soon became her medium of choice for satirical
social commentary.