George Selley, A Study of Assassination

A Study of Assassination

George Selley

Publisher
The Eyes Publishing
Year
2019
ISBN
979-10-92727-35-7
Specifications
25 x 30 cm
192 pages
A binder holding an accompanying booklet, loose archive documents, press cuttings and four self-contained 48-page sections
Archive documents, black-and-white photographs and colour photomontages
English and French

In 1997, under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA released a document written in 1953 and titled A Study of Assassination — in plain words, an assassin's manual. It belonged to a set of files on the programme to destabilise Guatemala and bring down the newly elected president, Árbenz, who intended to buy back land belonging to the United Fruit Company. That American corporation then owned a fifth of the country and nearly all the world trade in bananas, and ran an advertising campaign to turn the president into a puppet.

Selley works from that document. Through photomontages, setting lessons in murder against the bright imagery of the company's advertising, he takes on the imperial habits of the United States and its double-faced foreign policy, its economics and its power — presenting in pictures the manual whose lessons he has followed.

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