‘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 (dark room)

Lens: Earliest over 3000 years old

Chemical developing : discovered in 1727

.

The first successful picture was produced in June/July 1826 by Niépce,

using material that hardened on exposure to

light.

It required an exposure of eight hours

View from a window at La Gras Niépce

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 Hockney’s Secret Knowledge

Edward Steichen 1915

‘a different idea of beautiful photography’

What does Sontag mean by this?

The epigraph of a book of Walker Evan’s 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

1000’s of photos from family snapshots

to more professional work

using SLR-DSLR- compact 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 Billingham’s family study Ray’s A Laugh

Martin Parr

A few of Martin Devenney’s

MARY and Tom

Martin Devenney The Clock

Most of us take photos of the everyday because its easier

we’re 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.

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

first design for a series

of originally 36 famous

views of Mount Fuji,

Japan's sacred

mountain.

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 Bailey’s 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 O’Sullivan 1863

Aftermath of war in Charlston 1865

Revealed in 1920 Photo’s 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

Don’t 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