Spring 2011: So Many Events and Not Enough Photographs

Despite how active Spring 2011 was, there are a limited amount of photographs depicting important events.  For example one of the hallmarks of the Arab Spring was the wide dissemination of images and social media coverage, but despite the importance of the event to world politics there isn't one key photograph documenting the era.  When it comes to establishing collective memory about a given event via images, the last few years seem to have been more about moving picture than any other visual form: the rooftop footage via helicopter from Hurricane Katrina, then President-Elect Obama walking on stage to give his victory speech in 2008, and the initial waves of troops in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In the last 15 years, this seems like one of the few iconic images:

Moment of Impact by Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Part of what an iconic image provides is a "trigger" to establish a collective memory about a given event.  For example, Moment of Impact immediately sends me back to being evacuated from my elementary school and spending the evening in church with my mother.  As Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaitas put it, "There familiar images operate like the stock figures in memorial statuary, ceremonial oratory, and other representational practices that have been used to construct a community's sense of the past."  They are used to reinforce an emotional reaction to a a traumatic event and can be useful to connect the public to a particular era.  While iconic photography can encompass different areas of life, images from big, world-shaking events can't just have implications for a particular social group but must have implications across the globe.  For the purposes of this post, I will use the term "iconic photograph" to depict events with important political implications.

Going back to 2011, what images from world-changing events come to mind?  You could argue a photo from the Prince William-Kate Middleton wedding, but I would counter this event is not one that has a wide, lasting impact on the global community because it doesn't change the world political or social landscape.

By Matt Dunham, AP

But all other big events from the spring of 2011--the Arab Spring, the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, etc.-- live in collective memory in other mediums.  This realization is alarming.  What does this mean for the state of modern photography?  Does it represent the shift in how people gather their news from print to television and Internet sources?  Will there be anymore iconic images?

Of course there will be, but their impact will be different.  In fact, the world events that are memorialized in photography will be the ones with a larger impact because they will be more precious.

Go back to Spring 2011. There was one exception to the lack of iconic photographic images permeating the media.  

Inside the Situation Room by Pete Souza, White House

The death of Osama bin Laden closed an era of fear and conflict.  This photograph depicts top members of the U.S. Executive Branch--President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretaries Clinton and Gates--observing the key military mission.  While there is also the video image of the President walking down a red carpet to announce the success of the mission to the world (and the accompanying Saturday Night Live sketch), this photograph captures a rare, behind-the-scenes moment. A government is rarely this transparent in revealing how earth-changing minutes are handled.  It is what an iconic photograph is supposed to do, give a glimpse into an event that changes the course of world events.  

In the coming years in spite of the every growing depiction of global events, the pictures that will stay with people are the ones with the strongest tie to how we think about this moment.  

References

• "9-11: 25 Indelible Pictures." National Geographic Daily News.  2012.  Accessed: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/09/pictures/110908-about-911-september-9-11-twin-world-trade-center-towers-indelible/#/september-9-11-attacks-anniversary-ground-zero-world-trade-center-pentagon-flight-93-second-airplane-wtc_39997_600x450.jpg
• Hariman, Robert and John Louis Lucaitas.  No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007.  Accessed: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=z0mgPvL2MSwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=iconic+photographs&ots=IL3XZP8qdV&sig=vQ-EeCOHA6RrGUPfJZWjbc24OIs#v=onepage&q=iconic%20photographs&f=false
• O'Neill, Claire.  "2011 Replayed in Iconic Photos."  NPR.org. 20 December 2011.  Accessed: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/12/20/143955041/2011-replayed-in-iconic-photos
• Peralta, Eyder.  "PHOTO: Inside the Situation Room As the Opperation Happened."  NPR.org. 02 May, 2011.  Accessed: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/05/02/135931659/photo-inside-the-situation-room-as-the-operation-happened