Hariman and Lucaites (2007) define journalistic icons as those “photographic images appearing in print, electronic, or digital media that are widely recognized and remembered, are understood to be representations of historically significant events, activate strong emotional identification or response, and are reproduced across a range of media, genres, or topics” (p. 27). World War II, Vietnam, the Gulf War and America’s (ongoing) conflict with Iraq each produced a multitude of iconic images that continue to resonate within the country’s collective consciousness. There’s “The Kiss” by Alfred Eisenstaedt; Joe Rosenthal’s February 23, 1945 photo of the American flag being raised at Iwo Jima; Eddie Adams’ image of South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Laon executing Viet Cong Ngyen Van Lem during the Tet Offensive in 1968; Nick Ut’s 1972 photo of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim running naked after her village was struck by napalm; David C. Turnley’s 1991 photo of Sergeant Ken Kozakiewicz crying over a body bag containing his friend Andy Alaniz – killed by friendly fire; Koji Harada’s carefully framed photo of the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein; the premature revelry behind the “Mission Accomplished” photo-op; the searing images from Abu Ghraib – “the hooded-man” Satar Jabar, Lynndie England dragging a naked prisoner by a leash, and Charles Graner giving a thumbs-up over the corpse of a previously tortured man packed in ice. Missing from this list, however, are any iconic pictures of our ongoing war with Afghanistan.
What does that mean? Any war is, of course, too complex to be reduced to one photo, but it certainly seems significant that photo journalists have been unable to capture an image that catches the attention of American audiences. Could this mean that audiences are so apathetic that their response to the steady stream of war news coverage and commentary has been numbed? Is it, as Dahlia Lithwick suggests, “that if you see enough ‘iconic’ photos of a man in a hood with electrodes, they lose their ability to turn your stomach?”
Work Cited:
Hariman, Robert and John Lucaites (2007). No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. University of Chicago Press.
Like your title. You could consider bringing in the concept of routinization.
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