Anyone who opened a newspaper in Italy this spring will almost inevitably have come across Tano D’Amico’s photographs. D’Amico is considered the unofficial photographer of the Italian autonomists and the spontaneous, anti-authoritarian movement that kept the entire country on tenterhooks for one short year in 1977. Now, marking the 30th anniversary of 1977, the events are being commemorated everywhere in exhibitions, congresses, books and newspaper supplements, illustrated by photographs taken by D’Amico, who originally came from South America. However, he was not a neutral observer, but was himself part of the whole scene. He played an active part in the demonstrations, squats at the university and festivals. Precisely because of this insider’s gaze, his photos still succeed even today in conveying a vivid impression of the particular blend of political activism, solidarity and extremely brutal violence that was the hallmark of the 1977 movement. In addition, the images are characterised by a revolutionary pathos, which plays a considerable part in the current nostalgia for those days, viewed from the safe distance of the thirty years that have elapsed since.
D’Amico produced many of the key images of 1977. He succeeded for example in photographing the first »martyrdom« of the movement during the bloody clashes between demonstrators and the police on 2nd February in Rome. The snapshot shows Leonardo Fortuna with a pistol in his hand, as he tries to help Paolo Tommaso, who has already been hit, to escape, shortly before being struck by a bullet himself. What makes the photo so evocative is the way this mixture of barely contained violence and solicitousness creates the impression that the two were not militant fanatics, but peace-loving people, driven to violence solely to defend their ideals. With hindsight this feeling is also heightened by the fact that it was never definitively shown that Tommaso and Fortuna, who both served long prison sentences, had really open fire on police officers.
D’Amico was on the spot again a few days later when students occupying Rome University, La Sapienza, expelled Luciano Lama, the Secretary of the Communist trade union (CGIL), in a move generally held to constitute the definitive rupture of the radical left-wing with the Italian Communist Party (PCI). In 1976 the PCI agreed for the first time with the Christian Democrats (DC) on what was dubbed the historic compromise, in order to revitalize the crisis-ridden Italian economy. In contrast, the radical left categorically rejected the PCI’s efforts to stabilise Italian capitalism again, particularly as these endeavours were linked to a »policy of sacrifices«, which meant that demands for higher wages were to be abandoned despite increases in the cost of living. Furthermore, the government planned to reform the universities, retracting the essential achievements of ’68, which is why the students ended up occupying the campus.
However in his speech Lama did not say a single word about the students’ concerns, calling instead once again for greater moderation and more sacrifices. As a result, the initially peaceful protest grew more and more aggressive as the meeting went on and there were soon violent clashes with the trade union stewards. Lama finally had to break off his speech and left the premises on the run. A photo by D’Amico oozing with unparalleled revolutionary symbolism celebrates this (temporary) student victory. It shows heavily disguised demonstrators occupying the Sapienza, standing on an elegant sports car at the closed campus gate, armed with sticks and raising their fists in the Socialist salute, whilst on the left-hand side someone is holding an edition of the radical newspaper »Lotta Continua« through the bars. It is the image of a generation that seems resolved to defend itself tooth and nail against intruders, and the letters “Lama” on the left-hand edge of the photo remind us who such intruders might be.
However, after these successes everything rapidly went downhill. There were brutal street battles with the police even directly after Lama’s expulsion. The state resorted to increasingly draconian measures and outbreaks of violence, initially a marginal phenomenon, soon became an integral part of the clashes. This resulted in a growing number of fatalities, not only in Rome but also in Bologna, another centre of the movement. The movement unravelled remarkably rapidly after efforts to hold it together collapsed at a congress in Bologna in late September 1977, with many activists ending up in armed groups and an equally large group escaping by taking heroin.
Despite its short half-life, the 1977 movement left its mark on Italian society. Although it had nothing in common with organised terrorism, the ’77 activists played a part in exacerbating the spiral of increasingly extreme violence. They added considerably to the mood of despair and violence that caused the Red Brigades to escalate conflict with the state. In addition, it was only when the radical left broke with the PCI that the political basis was created which in March 1978 emboldened the Red Brigades to capture and subsequently murder Aldo Moro, the architect of the historic compromise.
However the current interest in the ’77 movement can only partly be explained by its indirect involvement in the escalation of Italian terrorism. The movement is historically significant above all as a manifestation of a particular structure of protest; in their bestseller on political theory, »Empire«, Toni Negri and Michael Hardt coined the term »multitude« to describe this (by the by, even back then Negri was already one of the most important pioneering thinkers of the radical left in Italy). In contrast to ’68 and the Operaist movement, the ’77 activists rejected all existing political elites and did not seek to establish new ones. The autonomous thrust of the ’77 movement allowed it to escape from traditional organisational forms, such as political parties or trade unions, and to survive without a manifesto or leaders. Instead the movement grouped together myriad individual interests, all on an equal footing, forming a network that was by no manner of means homogenous. It is precisely this open, indefinable mesh of relations that made it possible for the individual groups to cooperate without having to abandon their specific identities. This can be seen in D’Amico’s photos, with feminists, homosexuals, left-wing radical proponents of class struggle, environmentalists and freaks demonstrating, partying and engaging in political struggles in a free-floating community without recognisable structures, let alone hierarchies.
It is precisely this impression of the harmonious coexistence of the multitude conveyed in D’Amico’s photos that makes the ’77 movement appear so attractive – particularly in the light of the isolation of political interest groups nowadays. In this respect it does the 1977 myth very little harm that it took the state scarcely a year to respond to the multitude by brutally destroying it. A vast fount of hope is to be found even in the mere potential to become a mass movement and have a considerable influence on society. D’Amico’s photos evoke a sense of this potential, and of the firm resolve of people who seem prepared to do their utmost to defend the good in life against a life of evil.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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