ICONIC MOMENTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

HENRY VIII's WIVES 2D  ICONIC MOMENTS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY        PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION ORDINANCE PHOTOGRAPH        THE FEAR OF DEATH        LIGHT WITHOUT SHADOW (THE POSTER)        RELIGIOSE LEADERS 3D  BREAKING STEP        LIGHT WITHOUT SHADOW        POPULISM        FANTOM        THE DESERT BEAUTIFUL 4D  MR. HYSTERIA        SPIRAL BETTY        THE LOWEST NOTE OF AN ORGAN = THE LENGHT OF A FINGERNAIL GROWN SINCE 1730 = 8HZ        VILLA JELMINI        MACHBARKEIT        GREEN STICK FRACTURE        THE DESERT BEAUTIFUL        DO YOU REMEMBER THIS HOUSE AT ALL?        FABRIKA DA POLVERA 5D  TATLIN's TOWER AND THE WORLD

The series of photographs entitled The Iconic Moments of the 20th Century emerged in the processual work with the pensioners in a home for the elderly in Glasgow emanates the same impression. A group of aged volunteers pose in their everyday outfits and in their daily environment (the vicinity of the Home) to re-enact the scenes from well-known newspaper photographs taken from history books and encyclopaedias. The images in question depict ‘historical moments’ that took place in their lifetime: Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference during the World War II, the Napalm Attack and the killing a Vietcong from the Vietnam War, or the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald, which was depicted live on a TV programme. Each of these images represents an immediately recognisable cultural leitmotif of its époque, the representation that overshadows the event it documents. Let us remember the unclothed nine-year old girl Kim Phuc, the subject of the photo Napalm Attack, which toured the world inciting numerous political controversies: the Canadian photographer who took the picture won the Pulitzer Prize; the girl became the star of numerous humanitarian events and anti-war campaigns and also the hero of a bestselling book Girl in the Picture*. Jelena Velcic in Breaking Step—Displacement, Compasion and HUmour in Recent Art From Britain, Catalog, 2007 Belgrad ________________________________ *Denise Chong,The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc. The Photograph, and the Vietnam War (London: Penguin Books, 2001)