Pictures We Know ( the Iconic photograph)

A little bit of history

Sir John Herschel first used the

term photography in 1839,

Derived from the Greek words

for
light and writing.

Photography is a mix of three

ideas.
Camera Obscura
Lens:

(dark room)

Earliest over 3000 years old

Chemical developing : discovered in 1727

.

The first successful picture was produced in

June/July 1826 by Nipce,
using material that hardened on exposure to
light.

It required an exposure of eight hours

View from a window at La Gras Nipce

The French government bought the

rights to the photographic process in
1839.
And made it public

Louis Daguerre an (early pioneer)

named it the Daguerreotype.

1837 Daguerre

Two early examples

Edgar Allan Poe 1848

Abraham Lincoln 1846

anyone could take a photograph

with
no talent for drawing or
painting,
the new invention was an
overnight success

David Hockneys Secret Knowledge

Edward Steichen 1915

a different idea of beautiful photography

What does Sontag mean by this?

The epigraph of a book of Walker Evans photographs

uses a passage from Poet
Walt Whitman;

I do not doubt there is far

more in trivialities, insects,

vulgar persons, slaves,
dwarfs, weeds, rejected
refuse, than I have
supposed

Today
between us we take
1000s of photos
from family
snapshots
to more professional
work
using SLR-DSLRcompact digital
cameras, phones,
ipods, ipads etc etc

Mass Observation?

The Mass observation movement

recorded the everyday.
1930s It asked people on chosen single days
to write diaries
and take photographs
to record the moment in history

Humphrey Jennings
(a founder member) was asked to
take 900 photographs of Bolton in
1937
it became a study called
Worktown

An audience of madam Butterfly

A Day out at Blackpool arcades

Fruit machines at Blackpool

Blackpool beach

Cow with 5 legs

Working mans hair specialist

Left: Children at Play.

Above: outside the polling station

In the Pub

Park bench

Even professional photographers

take family snapshots

From Richard Billinghams family study Rays A Laugh

Martin Parr

A few of Martin Devenneys

MARY and Tom

Martin Devenney

The Clock

Most of us take photos of the

everyday because its easier
were surrounded by it
but there are very few iconic
images from the everyday

Charles Emmet Lunch on the Rockefella centre 1932

Walker Evans - Robert Frank

Evans
Frank
Good photographs of the every day but not the most recognisable of images

Robert Frank
The Americans 1958
Influenced by Walker Evans
took a trip across the USA and
photographed it.

Part of the beat movement/

friend of Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac
(who wrote the forward to the book)

Why then do some photographs

make the leap
to greater cultural significance?

What is an icon?

Icon
1.a. An image; a representation. b. A simile or symbol.
2. A representation or picture of a sacred or sanctified
Christian personage, traditional to the Eastern Church.
3. One who is the object of great attention and devotion; an
idol.
4. Computer Science. A picture on a screen that represents a
specific command.

If something is
Iconic
it represents a
whole cultural field

Why are these images iconic? Iconic of what?

London

45

Religious Iconography
and
Images of the Crucifixion

Juan de Flandes, The Crucifixion, around 1519

47

Rembrandt Slaughtered Ox 1683

No coincidence that images of

the crucifix
often become iconic photos
in themselves

Robert Capa Moment of Death 1937

Nic Ut 1972 (Pulitzer prize)

Abughraib torture photo

The crucified pose

Madonna 2006

Beckham

Liam Gallagher (Mojo 2007)

If an image is iconic
it is regularly copied or repeated
in culture

Iconic Art

The 'Great Wave off Kanagawa' is probably the

most famous Japanese woodblock print.

first design for a series

of originally 36 famous
views of Mount Fuji,
Japan's sacred
mountain.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa - by Hokusai Katsushika, 1830 (ish)

Che Guevara by Alberto Diaz Gutierrez,

(Korda)

original
Cropped

63

Jim Fitzpatrick (1968)

64

65

Photograph by Manny Garcia

Shepard Fairey.

Iconic photographs used by Warhol

69

Crime and the iconic image

David Baileys Box of Pin Ups

Lewis
Morley
1963
Christine
Keeler

Myra Hindley

Marcus Harvey 1998

Maureen Hindley and David Smith

The iconic war photograph

Gettysburg Timothy OSullivan 1863

Aftermath of war in Charlston 1865

Revealed in 1920 Photos by soldiers

Dead on the Beach George Strock 1943 Life

President Franklin D.
Roosevelt
was convinced that Americans
had grown too complacent
about the war, so he lifted the
ban on images depicting U.S.
casualties

Quote from Life magazine about the

photo.
Why print this picture, anyway, of three
American boys dead upon an alien
shore? Among the reasons:

words are never enough . . . words do

not exist to make us see, or know, or feel
what it is like, what actually happens.

Iwo Jima 1945 .

Mount Suribachi. Joe Rosenthal

1945

Raising the Flag

Afghanistan

Vietnam ( The first war of images)

Napalm Nick Ut 1975. The photo to end the war

Saigon Execution Eddie Adams 1968

Another Pulitzer prize

Buddhist Monk sets himself alight 1963

South of the DMZ Larry Burrows 1966

Tiananman Square protests June 5, 1989, Jeff Widner

The photo is the truth?

Liberation of Buchenwald 1945

Bosnia 1992. Penny Marshall (ITN) with her

cameraman Jeremy Irvin,

five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths

1917
The Cottingley Fairies

Images by Brian Walski

Soldier from A

Civilian From B

To create C

Microsoft ad
American and Polish
versions

Notice the extra person behind the raised

arm for this college prospectus

Dont have to photoshop

you can just arrange photos to
be taken

Iraq 2003

Hungry 1956

War
Crime
Celebrity
Sport
Everyday life

No one knows what photos will capture the

imagination of the public

No one knows what photographs will stay and which

will disappear with yesterdays newspapers
Once they stay
They become part of our cultural language