Dada refers to an avant-garde movement born in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.
Dada treated the photograph not as evidence of reality or a beautiful print but as material to be cut, pasted, and made to work politically. Photomontage turned mass-reproduced media images into instruments of critique.
Dada's contribution to photography was the discovery that the photograph is not a window onto reality but a piece of printed paper that can be cut, combined, and reframed — transforming mass-media images into instruments of political critique.
Dada refers to an avant-garde movement born in 1916 at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich.*1
On this site, photographers connected to Dada appear mainly in 1910–1920s, often overlapping with Surrealism and Rayograph / Photogram.*2
Dada often overlaps with Surrealism and Rayograph / Photogram. Reading those pages together makes it easier to see where method, institution, or critical language begins to diverge.*4