Herald Tribune: November 1977 (from the Modern History series), 1977 (printed 2008). 26 chromogenic prints, edition 2/3, 23 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches (59.7 x 41.9 cm) each. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York,Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee  2008.50. © 1977 Sarah Charlesworth

In Sarah Charlesworth's practice, the photograph is both a subject and a medium. Like that of her contemporaries Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, and Richard Prince, Charlesworth's work uses strategies of appropriation and reconstitution to critique systems of representation and reveal the ideological assumptions latent in the production and distribution of photographic images. For her 1977–79 series Modern History, she masked out the columns of text and headlines on photocopied images of newspaper front pages, leaving visible only the masthead and images. When the Red Brigade kidnapped the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, Charlesworth focused on how the image of a single event disseminated through different international papers. The prints comprising Herald Tribune: November 1977 (1977), on the other hand, collect the front pages of a single newspaper surveyed over the course of a month. The partial pages reveal an overriding predominance of war, weaponry, diplomatic events, and a privileged male presence in the newspaper. By displacing the primacy of language and focusing the viewer's attention on the graphic structures underlying the presentation of each newsworthy event, these works highlight the hierarchies of power at play in determining how and for whom a particular event is visually represented.

Lauren Hinkson