Iconic Photograph

An iconic photograph (whether produced in print, digital, or electronic media) is a photograph that adheres to the following four criteria:

1. Everyone in a public culture can recognize it.

2. It is understood to be a representation of an important historical event.

3. It evokes a strong emotional response through high levels of identification.

4. It is often copied or reproduced across various situations, genres, and media.

Powerful examples of iconic photographs include Joe Rosenthal’s Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945), Tiananmen Square’s Tank Man (1989), and Alfred Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day in Times Square (1945). Reproduced repeatedly, iconic photographs like these develop into public symbols, sometimes to the point that they become more memorable than the details of the events they represent.
Civic Identity
Robert Hariman and John Lucaites, the visual rhetoric scholars who coined the term, contend that iconic photographs have a way of performing civic identity. The images do so by forming ideas of citizenship and public action. Their ability to reproduce, inform, change, and shape ideology create a particular image of a public culture that acts not only as a resource for identity formation, but as a collective memory of the event represented.
For example, Joe Rosenthal’s Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima illustrates Hariman and Lucaites’s argument by defining US citizens to be egalitarian and cooperative through the image of soldiers laboring together to raise an American flag. Rather than portraying war as a stage for killing, the image instead emphasizes it as a performance of labor. This reflects ideologies of hard working Americans and civic pride, consequently shaping how citizens think of themselves and act in the future. Additionally, because the image is beloved by many American citizens, it is often reproduced to form a collective memory of Iwo Jima as a “beautiful monument to democratic sacrifice.”
Culture
Appropriation
Most of the time, an iconic photograph is not reproduced without appropriation. Appropriation allows a culture to reuse symbols, like iconic photographs, again and again for purposes that may or may not involve money. Each time, new connotations or denotations may be given to the image. However, it typically retains its dominant meaning.
Alfred Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day in Times Square has been appropriated many times in cases such as advertisements for JCPenney Hunt Club (1998), statues for the Disney Store, and magazine covers for The New Yorker (June 17, 1996 - “Two Sailors Kissing”). The appropriations hold to the ideology of the original copy but also manage to commodify the past; or, as in the case of “Two Sailors Kissing,” the appropriation manages to both profit and parody the image while simultaneously keeping with the dominant ideology and offering an alternative.
Constructed memory
Hariman and Lucaites also contend that when an iconic photograph constructs a collective memory, a marginalized memory is also formed. The marginalized memory is often forgotten because the collective memory overpowers it. Hariman and Lucaites see this as a negative outcome of iconic photographs. In most cases, the collective memory dominates the marginalized memory due to how the photograph is framed. Through subtle, artistic styles, photographers frame their photographs to evoke specific interpretations. These interpretations are often deeply congruent with the dominant ideology of the culture.

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