Marcelo Brodsky is an Argentine artist and human rights activist, working with images and documents of specific events to investigate broader social, political and historical issues. In 1968 – the Fire of Ideas Brodsky features archival images of student and worker demonstrations around the world, carefully annotated by hand in order to deconstruct what lay behind worldwide social turbulence in the late 1960s. Images of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in London and Tokyo sit alongside protests in Bogota, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico, Prague and San Paolo against military regimes and oppressive government structures.

For decades, Brodsky owned and directed a photo agency with offices throughout Latin America. After many years of exile in Barcelona, Brodsky returned to his native Argentina in 1994 after having fled during the years of the so-called Dirty War - a decade of state-sponsored terrorism in which dissidents and opponents of the military dictatorship were “disappeared”.

Having curated and presented a selection of prints from 1968 – The Fire of Ideas at Diffusion Festival: Revolution in Cardiff in 2019, I had the pleasure of overseeing touring of the exhibition extensively in Europe, with new works being added for each presentation. Subsequent venues included Centro de Historias in Zaragoza Spain, La Biennale de Lyon, France, Kaunas Photo Gallery, Lithuania, Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow and London Art Fair.

Of the series, Marcelo Brodsky comments:

“I believe those ideas of the 1968 are strong and important at this moment, when societies seem to be going in the opposite direction, toward a period of obscurity, repression and intolerance. Rescuing, re-examining, reviewing, and resignifying these ideas makes a lot of sense now, and the combination of image and text is a powerful way to deliver this message”.