I've been thinking this over. Even the lack of responses is somehow indicative of the truth of the matter -- in the digital era, in the 24-hour-news era, in the global-village era when anyone with $1,000 can jump onto a plane to almost anywhere, there are fewer iconic images because we're flooded with so many more pictures and video clips, so what becomes iconic is kind of a kaleidescope of impressions. It's not a single Abu Ghraib photo, it's several. It's not a single Iraq invasion photo, it's several photos and film clips.
Iconic photos up through the mid-1970s were very quickly recognized as such. The raising of the flag at Iwo Jima was not considered iconic by the photographer -- he was worried the editors wouldn't use it -- but it quickly captured the public's imagination in an era when still photographs were how most people related to distant events. ... Most images now recognized as iconic were widely reproduced shortly after being captured and often were prize-winners recognized by the public at a time when the majority consumers of visual information looked at newspapers and magazines. This lasted through the late 1970s, early 1980s.
But I think today's visual public would be hard-pressed to recognize, say, the last three Pulitzer photos in a multiple-choice test.
King's March on Washington produced iconic images. The assassinations of the 1960s produced iconic images. Vietnam produced iconic images. The Kent State shooting produced an iconic image. Steve McCurry's Afghan girl was iconic through the sheer force of her eyes and youth and emotional turmoil. The Challenger explosion produced an iconic image... the snaking smoke trails that lead to a non-existant spaceship ... but this was a transitional iconic image because it exsited both in a still photo and in television footage.
The iconic images out of the 1991 Gulf War were, for the most part, the green-tinted night-video footage of bombs raining down on Baghdad. One of the Turnleys, I think it was, caught an iconic image of a soldier's emotionial reaction aboard a helicopter carrying a body bag containing a friend. But this was not a war in which Americans felt a universal sense of loss ... because the losses were so isolated ... so the image hasn't resonated. Too, there was a remarkable image of the close-up of a grey charred Iraq soldier's face grimacing in death on Highway 8. But this also didn't resonate with the public because it was a TV war, with the mistaken perception that death -- what little there was -- had taken place at long distance, as though any death could be considered impersonal. The iconic perception of 1991 Gulf War as having transcended death and personal risk arguably led to some of the hubris and miscalculation of the level of effort required in Iraq 12 years later.
The Bosnian war's iconic moments show how most people experienced it ... the footage of a CNN news anchor on the air live while Sarajevo is shelled.
Paul Watson's October 1993 photo of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu is one of the iconic images of the 1990s. But it was taken under very unusual circumstances that harken back to an older time when our only impression of an event were via still images captured by a very small number of photographers in distant, dangerous places. That's because by the late summer of 1993, most news agencies had decided Somalia was so dangerous that they simply left. That in itself was extraordinary, given the fact that something like 20,000 American troops were still there, risking their lives almost completely outside of the awareness of the public back home. So the battle of Mogadishu took place with virtually no media coverage, and Paul Watson was one of the very few westerners who ventured to walk among Somalis.
There is an iconic image from the World Trade Center, of the gray rubble and firemen raising an American flag above it. It quickly became a U.S. postage stamp. But I think the television footage of the airplane striking the second tower is the more iconic image. And like other recent events, there is a kaleidescope of impressons -- much like the Kennedy assasination -- rather than a single still photograph.
I'm attaching a photo I took a few weeks after the helicopters were shot down in Mogadishu. It's not with an RF and it's not iconic, but it's the closest I ever came to being killed, because a few moments later the crowd started to realize I might be American, and Americans were not at all welcome in that neighborhood.
