In a photograph within a photograph taken by Gasparini at the exhibition Questions on German History, held at what had been known as the Museum of War in East Berlin, one can observe an execution perpetrated by an SS death squad during the Second World War in Ukraine. Under the suggestive title The Decisive Moment—a concept Cartier-Bresson used in allusion to an instant that makes an image unique—, the author portrays the crude literality of violence among the blurred bodies of onlookers.

Paolo Gasparini has portrayed Latin America beyond the stereotypes that were frequent in Europe. In order to blur the geography of misery he published Retroworld in 1986, designed by publishers Alter Ego with a text by Victoria de Stefano. The book included photographs taken on both sides of the Atlantic for the first time; images in which the author portrayed the poverty, cruelty, and alienation produced by different political models (communism, capitalism…) at a point when human beings are forgotten. Within the series, this photograph reminds Europeans of the horrors of their own history and dismantles the sense of moral superiority with which conflicts in developing nations are sometimes viewed.