Pictosophy

—
With love for Yukio Ota

—
The method of pictomontage consists of juxtaposing binary pairs of visual code signs to “cross significant directions” (Buck-Morss). The critical power of this maneuver possesses an enormous semantic force to call into question the signs. John Heartfield through the photomontage developed this dialectical critical idea using images and texts. Its principle of construction was the assembly where the elements that conform the image remain harmonically irreconciliable. Photomontages were not intended as mere aesthetic objects but images for reading in a political sense. Pictosophy is an exercise in analysis and contextualization, search for meanings and exchange of messages. The surface appearance of the pictomontages is used as gateway to a deeper reading of the image. If it is true that design is a way of thinking, then, it requires certain gestures that show it. We defend images as acts of thought, and pictomontages as their radical transmitter. —Sonia & Gabriel