Journal article
Cutting through the Archive: Querschnitt Montage and Images of the World in Weimar Visual Culture
New German critique, Vol.40(3), pp.1-40
2013
DOI: 10.1215/0094033X-2325410
Abstract
The
(cross-section film) has long been recognized as a documentary genre appropriate to mass society that uses montage, not the narrative development of individual characters, to compare various people and phenomena. But the term and concept of
had both a wider resonance in Weimar culture and a much longer history. This article traces the development of the concept from a type of scientific illustration to a model of sociological inquiry and finally to a mode of montage in print, photography, and film during the 1920s. Focusing in particular on Walter Ruttmann's
(
, 1929), it argues that Weimar culture mobilized
montage to come to terms with a new visual “archive”: namely, the thousands of indexical images of the world now circulating in illustrated journals and films.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Cutting through the Archive: Querschnitt Montage and Images of the World in Weimar Visual Culture
- Creators
- Michael Cowan
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- New German critique, Vol.40(3), pp.1-40
- Publisher
- Duke University Press
- DOI
- 10.1215/0094033X-2325410
- ISSN
- 0094-033X
- eISSN
- 1558-1462
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2013
- Academic Unit
- Cinematic Arts
- Record Identifier
- 9984430356202771
Metrics
1 Record Views