A groundbreaking exhibition titled "Cut, Paste, Print: Political Photomontage in the 20th Century" is currently running at La Contemporaine from November 19, 2025, to March 14, 2026, offering visitors an international panorama of this graphic technique and its militant uses from World War I to the fall of the Soviet Union. The exhibition features works such as Ludmila Tarasova's poster "Komsomol for Perestroika! XXth Congress of VLKSM, the objective is Acceleration, Initiative, Responsibility, Courage," highlighting how photomontage served as a powerful political tool throughout the century.
While today's digital age has made photo manipulation commonplace through software like Photoshop, the practice of photomontage emerged almost simultaneously with the invention of photography itself. Before the digital era, altering images required simple tools: scissors, glue pots, and printers. This seemingly primitive technique became a sophisticated method for influencing how photographs were interpreted and allowed for various forms of manipulation and combination.
Photomontage gained particular prominence during the 20th century within mass contexts marked by totalitarian regimes. The technique, based on cutting, pasting, and printed reproduction, enabled propagandists and artists to guide viewers' interpretation of photographs through strategic combinations and alterations. From postcards distributed in millions of copies at the beginning of the 20th century to illustrated press, magazines, and posters, photomontage became an integral part of mass communication.
Max Bonhomme, a design lecturer at the University of Strasbourg and co-curator of the exhibition alongside Aline Théret, explains the paradoxical nature of this technique. "In this exhibition, we seek to highlight graphic forms that were reproduced en masse," Bonhomme notes. "For example, postcards that could be distributed in millions of copies at the beginning of the 20th century, illustrated press, magazines, posters – all graphic objects that were industrial in their mode of production."
However, Bonhomme emphasizes that while the distribution was industrial, the creation process remained distinctly artisanal. "The compositional work that governs these objects can be qualified as artisanal, because the practice of photomontage before the digital era necessarily relied on very simple procedures that were almost accessible to everyone: cutting an image, pasting and possibly superimposing these graphic elements, then making them available to printers for reproduction."
The exhibition demonstrates how this accessible yet powerful technique became a cornerstone of political communication throughout the turbulent 20th century. By examining works from various countries and political movements, "Cut, Paste, Print" reveals how the simple act of cutting and pasting images became one of the most influential forms of visual propaganda, shaping public opinion through carefully constructed visual narratives that combined authenticity with manipulation.
