Curator's note:
This newspaper captures important cultural information related to the evolution of the digital printing of Palestine posters. In the photo we see a group of French citizens protesting a meeting between the French and Israeli foreign ministers on May 5, 2009 in Paris. The woman in the front of the march is holding up a Palestine poster designed by the Brazilian artist Carlos Latuff, entitled, "Israel Boycott".
The significance of this sighting is that it demonstrates empirically that the movement from centrally-printed political posters, including Palestine posters, which has been the operating practice for at least the past 100+ years, to localized digital printing in the past five years or so does not mean the end of ink-on-paper posters. Rather, it confirms that the printing of Palestine posters has now shifted from taking place exclusively in one, centralized location such as Cyprus, Lebanon, Tunis or various capitols in Europe and the Middle East and now happens at a location dictated by end users of the posters.
It also demonstrates that the graphic content of Palestine posters in no longer dictated by institutional Palestinian publishers, such as the PLO, the PFLP and the DFLP. For example, Latuff does not print any of his designs; he exclusively puts them up in high resolution format at his web site. These images are copyright free and anyone may download the graphic and print it out as these French demonstrators clearly have done.
DJW