Last week I went to the Met and a piece by Sarah Charlesworth entitled, April 21, 1978, caught my eye. She had reproduced the front page of newspapers from around the world, and besides the header, blocked out all type so only images were left amid blank white spaces. She was tracking the reproduction of one specific photographic image seen floating around each page:
It is a picture of Aldo Moro taken during his capture by the Red Brigades, holding a newspaper from the day before, April 20, 1978, declaring him dead. Obviously false. For Moro’s full story click here.
The key point of this piece lies in the manipulation of text and image, and how “Charlesworth was able to reveal some of the ways that image choice and placement were invariably politically motivated… Perceiving the photographic image as a strategic instrument for the exchange of information and the creation of values within in our culture, as Charlesworth describes it, is crucial to unraveling these persistent questions about the mass media and our relationship to it.”
Hierarchy is engrained in every designer’s brain as a way to communicate importance and visual direction. I often forget how powerful this is.
I am a direct contributor to mass media.
I have the power to change the way people think.
This is strange to me. It could be a gift or a curse, or both. Who knows. But, this piece made me start to put things back into perspective.
Sarah Charlesworth’s full project can be found here
