Photomontage and Acetylcholine

We headed over to the Camden Arts Centre today and thoroughly enjoyed the current exhibits, and even spent a bit of time in the reading room, flipping through a selection of books

before wandering around in Hampstead for the rest of the afternoon. With its grand houses,

atmospheric lanes,

and even a crazy cat or two,

Hampstead is always a wonderful place for a directionless stroll. Hampstead has quite a few blue plaques hidden amongst its posh streets, and we came across one for which he didn't recognise the name (John Heartfield) or the citation ("master of political photomontage").

A bit of Googling later, I learned that Heartfield was a German artist whose satirical photomontage works were critical of Nazism, and were rather unsurprisingly banned under Hitler's Third Reich. Heartfield's original name was Helmut Herzfeld, but in 1916 (at the age of 25) he changed his name in protest against anti-English slogans of the day, and in 1938, Heartfield left Berlin for Hampstead, where he lived in this house until 1943. By the way, if you're curious about the blue plaque visible in the earlier photo of Mount Vernon, it marks the former home of Sir Henry Dale, recipient of the 1936 Nobel Prize for Medicine for his identification of Acetylcholine as a possible neurotransmitter. A walk in Hampstead is as idyllic as it is educational!