Dada: the short-lived but world-shattering art movement. The root of Surrealism and performance art! As a response to the increasingly fast changes of the world in the early 20th century, particularly with the rise of the bourgeois, capitalism, and the horrors of the First World War, Dada-ism questioned and pushed the boundaries of all logic and reason. By its very nature, it was, in fact, illogical and playful. 

While this movement touched all forms of art from all over the world, photography held a very particular role in it by distorting what reality was. As a still relatively new practice at the time, photographers harnessed freedom of total exploration in their practice during this strange but fertile period of art-making. Techniques such as collaging, staging, and post-production manipulation were born out of the concept of Dada. 

“I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.” - Hannah Höch, German Dadaist photographer.