Amc2 Journal Issue 9. AMORE E PIOMBO The Photography of Extremes in 1970s Italy

Title :Amc2 Journal Issue 9. AMORE E PIOMBO The Photography of Extremes in 1970s Italy

Photographer(s) : AA.VV.

Writer(s) : Roger Hargreaves, Federica Chiocchetti

Designer(s): Melanie Mues

Publisher(s): Archive of Modern Conflict, London, England

Year : 2014

Print run :

Language(s) : English

Pages : 136

Size : 21 x 28 cm

Binding : Softcover with staples

Edition :

Print : Printed by Push, London England

Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest : Italy,1970

ISBN :

Issue 9 of Amc2 expertly edited by Roger Hargreaves and Federica Chiocchetti looks at the tumultuous era of Italy's Years of Lead – a period when bombings, kidnappings and assassinations became the standard currency of Italian politics. The press photographs collated for Amore e Piombo from the archives of Rome-based agency Team Editorial Services reflect the manifold aspects of the period, as the photographers oscillate between pursuing film stars at play and capturing the violence on the streets against a backdrop of industrial unrest and a sexual revolution embracing free love, divorce, abortion, feminism and gay rights. Far from offering answers or uncovering definitive truths, the photographs reveal only tantalising fragments of evidence.

The catalyst for this era of terror was the growing strength of the Italian Communist Party as an electoral force – a development opposed within Italy by the extremes on both left and right, and externally by the USA and the Soviet Union. At the dark heart of things were the murky manoeuvrings of clandestine groups within NATO, the CIA, the Italian secret services and the P2 Masonic Lodge. Outrages perpetrated by one political group were presented as the acts of another, giving rise to the Italian concept of dietrologia – the idea that surface explanations are rarely the real ones.

The press photographs collated for Amore e Piombo from the archives of Rome-based agency Team Editorial Services reflect the manifold aspects of the period, as the photographers oscillate between pursuing film stars at play and capturing the violence on the streets against a backdrop of industrial unrest and a sexual revolution embracing free love, divorce, abortion, feminism, and gay rights.

Far from offering answers or uncovering definitive truths, the photographs reveal only tantalising fragments of evidence about this most turbulent and tangled decade, while the true puppet-masters and string-pullers remain just out of frame.

From Archive of Modern Conflict