Seeing Red

Walking down the Lungotevere dei Cenci on my way home I came across this official poster for Rifondazione which appears to be one of the communist parties here in Italy. The posters were put up just across the street from the Tiber which is where I have found a great deal of communist graffiti in the past. Though the posters are certainly not readable from the street, their red color, I'd imagine, is meant to make them easily recognizable, perhaps to passing traffic. As I learned in Florence, there is an upcoming national meeting of Italian communists and these posters may be an attempt to get the members of the party out to it. Though I cannot translate the poster effectively, the images of people holding up the communist flag at what appears to be a rally is what I assume suggests that poster is designed to encourage participation in the up-coming congress.

The posters are put up in a similar style to the Berlusconi posters I found a couple weeks ago in that the same poster is repeated over and over in the same space. I am not sure what sort of regulations these poster boards are subject to in Rome, but this practice of putting up the same poster over and over again is common. The attempt to fill up all available space may suggest that there are no restrictions and that postering is simply a race to cover as much space as possible for as long as possible. It, of course, is also possible that the people who do the postering are paid by the poster. This would explain dumping as many of them in the same place as will fit. Still another possibility is that the same image repeated over three or four times is more likely to get someone's attention. Although I commonly see the same poster repeated in poster areas, I rarely see this repetition amounting to more than four posters.