Max Bonhomme: Composite Imagery and Political Propaganda. From Luther to 4Chan

For this presentation, the production of digital memes will be inscribed in the long term, that of a history of composite images conceived for political purposes. The idea of contagion will be considered in two ways: in the sense of the virality of images, their capacity to spread in the public sphere, but also in an iconographic sense: contagion of one body by another, hybrid characters, chimeras and monsters, generated by a desire to disqualify people or political entities. The notion of composite imagery can also be understood in two ways. It refers both to the hybrid nature of the images, conceived by montage of pre-existing images, and to the figuration of composite beings (human-animal, human-object, animal-object). By their irreverence towards all aesthetic criteria, by the manipulation of pre-existing images they bring into play, by their viral circulation, contemporary Internet memes are indeed part of this history of composite imagery with a satirical aim. I hope to show that internet memes can be understood with the intellectual tools of art history, be it formalism or iconology, but also how new media can carry the afterlife of past images.

Max Bonhomme holds a PhD in Art History (University of Paris Nanterre - HAR). His dissertation deals with the political uses of photomontage in France during the interwar period. His work lies at the intersection of the history of photography, the history of graphic design and visual studies. He questions the participation of activists in the making of political imagery in printed form, as well as the rhetorical and aesthetic potential of composite images across time. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal Transbordeur and has contributed to the journals Études photographiques, SHIFT, Artefact, Image[&]Narrative, and to the catalogue of the exhibition Photographie, arme de classe (Paris, Centre Pompidou, 2018).