Photomontage

Essay
Photomontage is the process, and result of creating a composite image or imagery by
cutting, joining, blending, pasting, and duplicating parts of other images, and
combining them with a number of other images to create a new image. Today
photomontage is mostly achieved using image-editing software such as Photoshop,
GIMP, Paint Shop Pro, or Paint.net. Although Photomontage bears it's roots in the
performing arts and photography.
For photomontage created using digital software, professionals use the term
compositing, and referred to casually as Photoshopping because of the program
Photoshop, that is widely used in the process. A composite of related photographs
created to extend the view of a scene or layout isn't generally considered
Photomontage.
According to the sources I have looked at, Photomontage dates back and seemed to
originate in Scotland in the 1850's, then referred to as Combination Printing. This
process required days of work, quality resources and difficult methods. It was first
called Double Printing. Combination printing was the process of layering separate
images on a singular photographic print, by carefully masking and making successful
exposures.
The first and most famous mid-victorian combination print was The Two Ways of
Life by Oscar Rejilander in 1875. Followed by the art of the photographer Henry
Peach Robinson such as Fading Away in 1858. These works are thought to have
actively set out to challenge the then dominant painting and tableau-vivants.
The Two Ways of Life - 1875

Fading Away - 1858

Photomontage was really pushed as an art form during World War One, by the
Dadaism movement, this was how they communicated and commented on society
and the reasons for the war at the time. While the Dada movement eventually ceased,
the process of Photomontage lived on and was later used in the Surrealist movement
and most notably by Salvador Dali. However it was the Dadaism movement that
coined the term Photomontage towards the end of World War One, around 1918 to
1919.