Mixed Media

Photography emerged in the nineteenth century as a medium closely associated with documentation, science, and truth. Early photographic processes such as the daguerreotype (introduced in 1839) were valued for their ability to accurately record the visible world.

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However, as the twentieth century approached and society underwent rapid industrial, political, and technological change, artists increasingly began to question photography's claim to neutrality. Mixed media practices within photography developed as a response to these shifts, allowing artists to move away from straight photography and instead treat the photograph as a material that could be altered, disrupted, and recontextualised. 

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One of the earliest and most significant developments in mixed media photography occurred in the 1910s with the rise of Cubism. Artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque introduced collage and papier collé around 1912, incorporating real world materials like newspaper and printed text into artworks.

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Although Cubism was primarily associated with painting, its influence on photography was conceptual rather than technical. It challenged the idea that a single viewpoint could represent reality. This shift encouraged later photographic artists to abandon the idea of the photograph as a complete and truthful image, opening the door to fragmentation and reconstruction.

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During the first world war, this became more explicit with the introduction of Dadaism. The devastation of the war and widespread distrust in political authority and mass media led to Dada artists to view traditional art forms as inadequate. Figures such as Hannah Höch and John Heartfield developed photomontage, a technique involving cutting and reassembling images sourced from newspapers and magazines. These works exposed how photographic imagery could be manipulated for propaganda, directly challenging the belief that photographs represented the truth. Mixed media at this time became a political tool.

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In the 1920s and 30s, surrealism further expanded the use of mixed media in photography. Influenced by the psychological theories of Freud, and shaped by the post war climate, surrealist artists used photography alongside collage, drawing, and painting to explore the unconscious nature of human thoughts. Artists such as Man Ray manipulated photographs through techniques like solarisation and photograms, producing images that resisted realism and embraced ambiguity. In this context, photography was no longer a factual record but a means of visualising internal states, dreams, and memory.

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From the late 20th century onwards, photography based mixed media increasingly incorporated conceptual and digital approaches. Artists such as Barbara Kruger combines photographic imagery with bold text to critique power, identity, and mass communication, reflecting a media saturated world where images function as persuasion as much as documentation. 

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Overall, the evolution of mixed media reflects a strong move away from straight photography and its associations with truth and objectivity. As historical events such as war, mass media expansion, and technological advancement reshaped society, artists increasingly used mixed media to question what photographs represent and how they are constructed, positioning the photograph not as a site of evidence of truth but a site of interpretation.