April 21, 1978, 1978
- Medium
- 45 black and white photographs
- Dimensions
- Each: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm)
- Accession Number
- 89.40
- Credit
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of Peter and Eileen Norton, Santa Monica, California
On April 21, 1978, following rumors of the assassination of the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, the Red Brigades militant group released a photograph of Moro, whom they had kidnapped and held prisoner since March 17. The photo was sent to two Rome newspapers and pictured the captive Moro holding the previous day’s paper bearing the banner headline questioning the veracity of the assassination claim. Within twenty-four hours, this single image was transmitted world-wide, appearing on front pages across Western Europe, North and South America, Japan, Scandinavia, and multiple Eastern Bloc nations. Charlesworth traces the image’s trajectory through a rigorously systematic mode of presentation: By masking out text to foreground the photograph’s scale and placement in relation to other photos on each newspaper page, she reveals the significance of this event within global politics.
