THE DEATH OF THE ICON   The modern era of the printing-press subsequently produced the iconic photograph. Its stature as iconic was reached through heightened reproduction, exceeding that of all other images. Subsequently, the icon has permeated public culture, shaped collective memory and as such, has been successful in subtly propelling certain ideologies above the rest. Naturally then, as the era of print increasingly gives way to the new communications environment opened up by digital technology, the iconic photograph is in a state of decline.   The current cultural climate is one hostile to the iconic image. The allegiances the iconic photograph has often made to the state, due to its former dominance over images in public life, are now as defunct as its presence in an age shaped by a proliferation of images produced and disseminated by a heterogeneous community of photographers and spectators. Struggling to emerge and to maintain what has previously been a sealed, beautiful image, stable in meaning and detached from the realities it traces or discussions around its depiction, the icon’s fate is now terminal.   MUTE STATE ICONS   The Canadian cultural theorist Louis Kaplan observed, ‘in the modern period – the period when both the nation state and the medium of photography have been instituted and have flourished – photographic images have externalised and realised how we imagine community’. A study of the celebratory exuberance of V-J Day, Times Square (1945), by Alfred Eisenstaedt supports Kaplan’s point. This iconic image commemorates an idealised, key moment in American history, which seeks to reify citizenship based on territories and national identity, simultaneously perpetuating the norm.   In No Caption Needed, Hariman and Lucaites take Eisenstaedt’s photograph as a case study and re-imagine the image to depict a black sailor kissing a white nurse. ‘What could be more beautiful than his dark uniform against her white uniform and, her white skin against his black skin?’ they ask. Their point is that somewhere in America a black sailor may have kissed a white nurse on V-J Day, but it was not displayed in the national media as a symbol of celebration - instead a white couple were selected. The modern icon has served to mark the societal limitations of public culture at a given time, as much through its blind spots as its actual content.   Both the sailor and the nurse in Eisenstaedt’s image are identifiable as such through their uniforms. These outfits signify their support for the state’s part in the war whilst their embrace symbolises their ecstasy for the victory to which they have contributed. The image is beautiful, romanticised and easy to detach from the brutal realities of war. It is also easy to separate from the actual event itself: through the onslaught of time this photograph has become just as symbolic for love, romance, New York City and other military campaigns. The modern icon is excellent at shirking the facts and specifics of its content, becoming instead an empty referent.   The Israeli cultural theorist, Ariella Azoulay, focuses on Micha Pari’s Ink Flag from the occupation of Um Rashrash in 1949 in the text Declaring a State: Declaring a State of War and reveals further how malleable the meaning of an iconic image is. The event captured by Pari at Um Rashrash was nothing more than the raising of a flag and the thrusting of a flagpole into an abandoned police building. ‘Two IDF companies entered an empty hamlet that consisted of some huts along the beach. No battle took place. Instead, the idea of a battle was added to the event—after the fact—as the necessary ground for the planting of the flag- pole,’ according to Azoulay. The realities of this image emerge from the testimonies of fighters in the two companies who were on their way to occupy Um Rashrash. They did not fight an enemy but rather raced each other to the target in order to hoist the flag.   Every photograph requires the spectator to participate in the reconstruction of the photographic statement in order to give the image meaning. However, concealing this fact has clearly been part of the monopolisation of meaning symptomatic of the modern icon. This control over the meaning of the image is twinned with the state’s formerly-dominant control over its channels of dissemination. This is why the iconic image of Um Rashrash signified a battle, even though the testimonies of soldiers revealed that to be fictitious. The era of print could muffle the soldier’s claims, whereas in the current communications climate a new, unregulated realm has opened up, allowing for a more democratic plane. The realities of a photograph are now much more likely to emerge as what it depicts is frequently discussed.   The communications era now offers the possibility to interact with photographs; to re-address their captions, their presentation, format, size or saturation. Blogs, comment boxes and social media sites encourage such interaction and operate on the understanding that the meaning of an image is unstable.   As the world becomes increasingly deterritorialised, our identities dissolving further into the alternative virtual realm in which most images reside, the nature of the iconic image is visibly changing. The typically positive significations of the iconic photograph, such as patriotism and consensus are increasingly usurped by a type that is generally negative – articulating protest and fragmentation.   THE ICON OF ABU GHRAIB   Eisenstaedt or Peri’s images are diametrically opposed to Ron Haeberle’s image, My Lai Massacre and Nick Ut’s image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, which significantly turned public opinion against the state during the Vietnam War. This subversive turn has continued through to the iconic image of the Electric Man, known as ‘Gilligan,’ from Abu Ghraib. This is one of the most recent ‘iconic’ images in circulation.   However, unlike Ut or Haeberle’s photographs, Gilligan signifies a move even further away from what is traditionally viewed as ‘iconic’. Gilligan sheds all claims of artistry in its form, something the subversive precedents retained. Instead, Gilligan is a decidedly ugly image. Secondly, it signals a collapse between public and private imagery that - in microcosm - articulates a breakdown symptomatic of the voyeuristic structure of the web and digital communication at large.   Photographs of personal events are frequently uploaded onto the web for an indeterminate audience and constantly we find ourselves imparting formerly private information onto the most exposed domain possible. Gilligan is an image not taken at a distance, but a pornographic photograph; trophy footage that has ‘leaked’ onto the unregulated domain of the web and reached iconic, public stature through alternative channels. It was not created for public life, but has become a prescient part of it.   Ex–US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld avowed that he was sure he was not the only member of the committee ‘more outraged by the outrage’ over the photographs than by what the photographs show at Abu Ghraib. ‘These prisoners,’ Senator Inhofe explained, ‘you know they’re not there for traffic violations. If they’re in Cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents.’ But, despite his best attempts to re-write the photograph’s ‘caption’, they garnered hostility towards American foreign policy and continue to do so today.   Finally, Gilligan represents a specific situation and this outweighs any symbolic meaning that could be attached to it. Hariman and Lucaites described an iconic image as one in which ‘social knowledge is fused with a paradigmatic scene, say poverty or war.’ They add that from their research, ‘it became obvious that people don’t know a great many circumstantial details regarding any iconic photograph such as its date, specific location, names of the participants,’ and so on. However, this is not the case with Gilligan. The image is iconic because of its production at Abu Ghraib and its emergence from a war that was contested widely in the public realm. The life-stories of the photographers frequently annotate the image, thanks to a rigorous media frenzy following their publication. The very public trial of photographer’s that ensued only revealed more information to attach to it. The ‘iconic’ image now is measured by the activity produced rather than the passivity induced.     THE ICON OF THE ARAB SPRING?   Frequently, many other photographs from Abu Ghraib accompany images of Gilligan. It is unlikely that a spectator will be familiar with the Gilligan image but never have seen Sabrina Harman’s ‘thumbs up’ amongst the torture victims, for example. The digital age reduces the limitations of how many photographs can be taken and also how many images can be stored. The World Wide Web is a huge, seemingly infinite archive for visual documents whilst the increasing accessibility of cameras is bringing more and more photographs into existence. Paradoxically, as the channels of production and dissemination widen in their possibilities, the potential for a single iconic image to emerge is reduced.   The ‘Arab Spring’ is one of the most pertinent examples of revolutionary political action to arise out of the twenty-first century following the Iraq War. It is the type of political scenario one would expect an iconic image to emerge out of. But where is it? Our historical proximity to the revolutions across North Africa is too close for us to say with any real certainty that there will be no definite iconic photograph to emerge. However, this is a possibility more likely now than ever before.   If we dissect the Arab Spring further, looking at key individual moments, such as the death of Gaddafi, it is possible to trace the visual turn we are in the midst of. First of all, it was not professional photographers who captured the death of the fallen Libyan leader, but amateurs. Like Gilligan, the pixellated ‘poor’ image fed both capitalist assembly lines and alternative channels. It is the blurry, noisy image of Gaddafi that is now associated with his death, but there is no single image to emerge out of the archive above the rest. The archive is what now defines public life in visual terms.   Visual documents are important aids for the remembrance of political moments and whilst the death of the iconic image may pose a threat to the traditions of collective public memory, the archive that could potentially replace it is more expansive and informative. The archive turns every image into part of a series and undermines an image’s potentially iconic status by inserting it into a mental and political discourse. This transforms the photograph into a visual document that the spectator is called on to read, or rather to examine.   The Arab Spring will not slip out of our minds as it is indelibly marked there, but these marks are multifarious and complex. In short, there is a large and heterogeneous visual trail of the revolutions across North Africa that is appropriate, given the complex situation it documents.   For too long we have seen the modern iconic image but been blind to what it contains. The digital communications era has opened a new visual field, one that is usurping the last and informing us along the way. It is hard to romanticise, to manipulate or to propagate an image in this environment. By presenting us with an archive of images, it may help us to see, to discuss, to remember and maybe even start to understand the type of world that is unfolding around us.   Rachael Cloughton View high resolution

THE DEATH OF THE ICON

 

The modern era of the printing-press subsequently produced the iconic photograph. Its stature as iconic was reached through heightened reproduction, exceeding that of all other images. Subsequently, the icon has permeated public culture, shaped collective memory and as such, has been successful in subtly propelling certain ideologies above the rest. Naturally then, as the era of print increasingly gives way to the new communications environment opened up by digital technology, the iconic photograph is in a state of decline.

 

The current cultural climate is one hostile to the iconic image. The allegiances the iconic photograph has often made to the state, due to its former dominance over images in public life, are now as defunct as its presence in an age shaped by a proliferation of images produced and disseminated by a heterogeneous community of photographers and spectators. Struggling to emerge and to maintain what has previously been a sealed, beautiful image, stable in meaning and detached from the realities it traces or discussions around its depiction, the icon’s fate is now terminal.

 

MUTE STATE ICONS

 

The Canadian cultural theorist Louis Kaplan observed, ‘in the modern period – the period when both the nation state and the medium of photography have been instituted and have flourished – photographic images have externalised and realised how we imagine community’. A study of the celebratory exuberance of V-J Day, Times Square (1945), by Alfred Eisenstaedt supports Kaplan’s point. This iconic image commemorates an idealised, key moment in American history, which seeks to reify citizenship based on territories and national identity, simultaneously perpetuating the norm.

 

In No Caption Needed, Hariman and Lucaites take Eisenstaedt’s photograph as a case study and re-imagine the image to depict a black sailor kissing a white nurse. ‘What could be more beautiful than his dark uniform against her white uniform and, her white skin against his black skin?’ they ask. Their point is that somewhere in America a black sailor may have kissed a white nurse on V-J Day, but it was not displayed in the national media as a symbol of celebration - instead a white couple were selected. The modern icon has served to mark the societal limitations of public culture at a given time, as much through its blind spots as its actual content.

 

Both the sailor and the nurse in Eisenstaedt’s image are identifiable as such through their uniforms. These outfits signify their support for the state’s part in the war whilst their embrace symbolises their ecstasy for the victory to which they have contributed. The image is beautiful, romanticised and easy to detach from the brutal realities of war. It is also easy to separate from the actual event itself: through the onslaught of time this photograph has become just as symbolic for love, romance, New York City and other military campaigns. The modern icon is excellent at shirking the facts and specifics of its content, becoming instead an empty referent.

 

The Israeli cultural theorist, Ariella Azoulay, focuses on Micha Pari’s Ink Flag from the occupation of Um Rashrash in 1949 in the text Declaring a State: Declaring a State of War and reveals further how malleable the meaning of an iconic image is. The event captured by Pari at Um Rashrash was nothing more than the raising of a flag and the thrusting of a flagpole into an abandoned police building. ‘Two IDF companies entered an empty hamlet that consisted of some huts along the beach. No battle took place. Instead, the idea of a battle was added to the event—after the fact—as the necessary ground for the planting of the flag- pole,’ according to Azoulay. The realities of this image emerge from the testimonies of fighters in the two companies who were on their way to occupy Um Rashrash. They did not fight an enemy but rather raced each other to the target in order to hoist the flag.

 

Every photograph requires the spectator to participate in the reconstruction of the photographic statement in order to give the image meaning. However, concealing this fact has clearly been part of the monopolisation of meaning symptomatic of the modern icon. This control over the meaning of the image is twinned with the state’s formerly-dominant control over its channels of dissemination. This is why the iconic image of Um Rashrash signified a battle, even though the testimonies of soldiers revealed that to be fictitious. The era of print could muffle the soldier’s claims, whereas in the current communications climate a new, unregulated realm has opened up, allowing for a more democratic plane. The realities of a photograph are now much more likely to emerge as what it depicts is frequently discussed.

 

The communications era now offers the possibility to interact with photographs; to re-address their captions, their presentation, format, size or saturation. Blogs, comment boxes and social media sites encourage such interaction and operate on the understanding that the meaning of an image is unstable.

 

As the world becomes increasingly deterritorialised, our identities dissolving further into the alternative virtual realm in which most images reside, the nature of the iconic image is visibly changing. The typically positive significations of the iconic photograph, such as patriotism and consensus are increasingly usurped by a type that is generally negative – articulating protest and fragmentation.

 

THE ICON OF ABU GHRAIB

 

Eisenstaedt or Peri’s images are diametrically opposed to Ron Haeberle’s image, My Lai Massacre and Nick Ut’s image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, which significantly turned public opinion against the state during the Vietnam War. This subversive turn has continued through to the iconic image of the Electric Man, known as ‘Gilligan,’ from Abu Ghraib. This is one of the most recent ‘iconic’ images in circulation.

 

However, unlike Ut or Haeberle’s photographs, Gilligan signifies a move even further away from what is traditionally viewed as ‘iconic’. Gilligan sheds all claims of artistry in its form, something the subversive precedents retained. Instead, Gilligan is a decidedly ugly image. Secondly, it signals a collapse between public and private imagery that - in microcosm - articulates a breakdown symptomatic of the voyeuristic structure of the web and digital communication at large.

 

Photographs of personal events are frequently uploaded onto the web for an indeterminate audience and constantly we find ourselves imparting formerly private information onto the most exposed domain possible. Gilligan is an image not taken at a distance, but a pornographic photograph; trophy footage that has ‘leaked’ onto the unregulated domain of the web and reached iconic, public stature through alternative channels. It was not created for public life, but has become a prescient part of it.

 

Ex–US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld avowed that he was sure he was not the only member of the committee ‘more outraged by the outrage’ over the photographs than by what the photographs show at Abu Ghraib. ‘These prisoners,’ Senator Inhofe explained, ‘you know they’re not there for traffic violations. If they’re in Cellblock 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents.’ But, despite his best attempts to re-write the photograph’s ‘caption’, they garnered hostility towards American foreign policy and continue to do so today.

 

Finally, Gilligan represents a specific situation and this outweighs any symbolic meaning that could be attached to it. Hariman and Lucaites described an iconic image as one in which ‘social knowledge is fused with a paradigmatic scene, say poverty or war.’ They add that from their research, ‘it became obvious that people don’t know a great many circumstantial details regarding any iconic photograph such as its date, specific location, names of the participants,’ and so on. However, this is not the case with Gilligan. The image is iconic because of its production at Abu Ghraib and its emergence from a war that was contested widely in the public realm. The life-stories of the photographers frequently annotate the image, thanks to a rigorous media frenzy following their publication. The very public trial of photographer’s that ensued only revealed more information to attach to it. The ‘iconic’ image now is measured by the activity produced rather than the passivity induced.

 

 

THE ICON OF THE ARAB SPRING?

 

Frequently, many other photographs from Abu Ghraib accompany images of Gilligan. It is unlikely that a spectator will be familiar with the Gilligan image but never have seen Sabrina Harman’s ‘thumbs up’ amongst the torture victims, for example. The digital age reduces the limitations of how many photographs can be taken and also how many images can be stored. The World Wide Web is a huge, seemingly infinite archive for visual documents whilst the increasing accessibility of cameras is bringing more and more photographs into existence. Paradoxically, as the channels of production and dissemination widen in their possibilities, the potential for a single iconic image to emerge is reduced.

 

The ‘Arab Spring’ is one of the most pertinent examples of revolutionary political action to arise out of the twenty-first century following the Iraq War. It is the type of political scenario one would expect an iconic image to emerge out of. But where is it? Our historical proximity to the revolutions across North Africa is too close for us to say with any real certainty that there will be no definite iconic photograph to emerge. However, this is a possibility more likely now than ever before.

 

If we dissect the Arab Spring further, looking at key individual moments, such as the death of Gaddafi, it is possible to trace the visual turn we are in the midst of. First of all, it was not professional photographers who captured the death of the fallen Libyan leader, but amateurs. Like Gilligan, the pixellated ‘poor’ image fed both capitalist assembly lines and alternative channels. It is the blurry, noisy image of Gaddafi that is now associated with his death, but there is no single image to emerge out of the archive above the rest. The archive is what now defines public life in visual terms.

 

Visual documents are important aids for the remembrance of political moments and whilst the death of the iconic image may pose a threat to the traditions of collective public memory, the archive that could potentially replace it is more expansive and informative. The archive turns every image into part of a series and undermines an image’s potentially iconic status by inserting it into a mental and political discourse. This transforms the photograph into a visual document that the spectator is called on to read, or rather to examine.

 

The Arab Spring will not slip out of our minds as it is indelibly marked there, but these marks are multifarious and complex. In short, there is a large and heterogeneous visual trail of the revolutions across North Africa that is appropriate, given the complex situation it documents.

 

For too long we have seen the modern iconic image but been blind to what it contains. The digital communications era has opened a new visual field, one that is usurping the last and informing us along the way. It is hard to romanticise, to manipulate or to propagate an image in this environment. By presenting us with an archive of images, it may help us to see, to discuss, to remember and maybe even start to understand the type of world that is unfolding around us.

 

Rachael Cloughton