Front Page

'The Medium is the Message' claimed Marshall McLuhan. What better way to survey the ideas, events and leaders of the last century than through the striking images of its magazine covers? Structured thematically, Front Page provides an original and provocative visual account of the twentieth century as depicted by its best-known international periodicals (Vogue, The Tatler, Private Eye, Paris Match, The New Yorker, Newsweek etc). It covers world political and historical events such as the Russian revolution, the Spanish Civil War, Hiroshima, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and presents the great political and historical characters of an epoch. Iconography can be propoganda, satire, fashion or plain reporting of events. The visual rhetoric of a fast-moving century provides for some startling conclusions - that the most widely featured woman of the entire period was Sophie Loren, the man - Churchill. This is a panoramic view of twentieth-century life and society; a resume of great sporting events, of rock stars, political leaders and other media heros. Fashion and design trends will also be highlighted through the work of the greatest photographers and illustrators.