Treading on Kings

Steidl Verlag
132 pages / 9 x 11 cm
Softcover
04/2003
ISBN 978-3-88243-837-6

Four thousand journalists and photographers gathered in Genoa during the third week of July 2001 to cover the 26th meeting of the official discussion club of the leaders of the industrialized nations of the world--currently referred to as the G8. Among them was Joel Sternfeld who came to Genoa as an artist/photographer with a commitment to planetary sustainability. 

What did those banner-waving, song-singing, globally-wired 'anti-global protesters' actually want? Sternfeld set out to find out. Walking and running the streets with the demonstrators, photographing and recording the comments of individuals as circumstances allowed, he made the series of quick portraits with accompanying statements that forms the heart of this book. 

The death of Carlo Giuliani and the terrifying Saturday night raid on the Genoa Social Forum, in which sleeping protesters were beaten, leaving pools of blood on the floor of the Armando Diaz School, gave urgency to the task of reporting what had occurred.