The Functional Montage of Design and Ideology

This talk introduces the concept of the functional montage to analyze how German photobooks produced political meaning through design, materiality, and paratextual elements. Rather than treating photobooks as neutral containers for images, it shows how elements such as typography, captions, format, and covers work together as an integrated compositional system. In contrast to avant-garde montage, which often emphasized rupture and shock, the functional montage organizes heterogeneous components into a coherent whole in which visual, textual, and material features jointly advance ideological claims.

Drawing on examples from political, documentary, and travel photobooks of the period that depict labor, national and European space, idealized bodies, and antisemitic constructions of Jewish life in Berlin, the talk argues that these works do not simply represent political ideas but actively stage them through their material form. By foregrounding the photobook as a designed object, the talk highlights its role as a mass-media technology that shaped historical perception and collective political imagination in early 20th-century Germany.