03.

Iconic Images.

I have looked at how photographs can trigger memory but now I want to look at what makes a photograph memorable. To do this I have put together what I believe to be a collection o the most famous and memorable images of all time. I am going to look at the images and research into them and try at the end to have come to some form of conclusion why I think that they are so iconic and memorable.

 

Title: The Unknown Rebel (1989)
Photographer: Jeff Widener (similar images captured but numerous photographers)

This is one of the most reproduced and icon image of the modern world it was taken in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square Protests. The photo depicts a lone student protester who stopped the advancing tanks for more than half an hour just by simply standing in front of them. Even thought this image was captured by a number of different photographers this close up image by the photographer Jeff Widener is the image I would consider to be the most well known. He took the photo from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel

, about half a mile away from where the even took place. This photograph more than anything is a symbol of hope. As the title of the photograph suggests (The unknown  Rebel) I also convey sense of fighting for what you believe in, taking a stance for what you believe to be right no matter what the impossible odds. I don’t know if Widener had this in mind when he was capturing this image, as he was a press photographer he may have just seen it as him documenting this amazing stance of courage but deliberate or not the image still successfully conveys this rebellious ideals to a viewer.

 

 

 

 

Photographer: Eddie Adams

This image was taken whilst Eddie Adams was covering the Vietnam War as a press photographer the image depicts the last seconds of this Vietnamese prisoners (Nguyen Van Lem) life before chief General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executed his in broad daylight on a Saigon street, on February 1, 1968, during the opening stages of the Tet Offensive. I have seen this image hundreds of time before but I had always taken that it was an unjust solider killing a seemingly innocent civilian in a quote I found the image even came to symbolize “highly escalated and often indiscriminate hostility” to anti-war protestors. But researching further into this image I found out that apparently the man who we are seeing about be executed was apparently a captain of a Viet Cong assassination and revenge platoon, according to his captures Lem and his men had just finished executing the wives, children and relatives of South Vietnamese police officers. Thirty-four bound and murdered civilians were found in one ditch near to where Lem was captured. If this is true in my mind it really does effect the way I feel when I look at this photo, from one of utter unjust despair to one almost swift justice was served. But before his death photographer Eddie Adams was quoted as saying “it was unfair on the police chief who carried out the killing.” Which yet confuses how I feel about this photo even more. Looking at this photograph now knowing the story behind it I see it as more of as an argument of just vs. unjust killing.   

 

 

 

 

 

Title: The burning monk – self immolation (1963)
Photographer: Malcolm Browne

On the June 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon. His reason was to bring to the attentions of the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time. Buddhist monks asked the regime to lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag, to grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism, to stop detaining Buddhists and to give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread their religion. As you can see there was quite a longwinded political reason behind this image but I bet if you ask about 90% probably more what this photo was about thay wouldn’t have a clue, I can’t say I did before I researched into it. But the image itself is horrific, why would such and image of a man burning himself to death (self immolation) be so well know? I think it must have something to do with or nature, the sort of car crash culture when we just can’t help but stair at things like this. The circulation of this picture was further exasperated when in 1992 the band ‘Rage against the machine’ used a close up cropped version of this image as the cover of their multi platinum, highly acclaimed, self titled debut album; which has sold almost 3 million copies in the U.S. alone. Which makes me think the more an image I produced and the more we see it does it begin to lose its meaning and also the ability to shock us because this is a shocking image but I’ve seen it that many times and grown up with it on a cover of one of my favorite albums that it doesn’t really impact on me the way I think it should.

 

 

 

 

Title: Stricken child crawling towards a food camp (1994).
Photographer: Kevin Carter

This image was taken in 1994 during the Sudan Famine, the picture depicts stricken child crawling towards a United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away from where carter took this picture. As a viewer we are lead to believe that the vulture in the background is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken and just a month after is won him the Pulitzer Prize. Carter committed suicide due to depression three months after he took this photograph in the note he left it said, “I

am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners”. When I look at this photograph it give’s me a feeling of hopelessness. It is one of the most concise symbols of death in an image I have ever seen, the vulture just waiting for the child to die and that why I think it so famous its that cliché everyone knows of “the vultures circling” but this is real life and this is the reality of that saying. Seeing this photograph and knowing that the person who took it killed himself and seeing some of his other shocking a gruesome photographs just make me wonder what horrors carter must have seen that he didn’t document.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title: Lunch atop a Skyscraper (1932)
photographer: Charles C. Ebbets

This very famous image was taken during construction of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center in 1932. The image depicts 11 men eating lunch, sitting on a steal girder, dangling hundreds of feet above the New York City streets with no safety gear to hold them on it what so ever. The image came to light when it appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in its Sunday photo supplement on October 2 1932. this is the most light hearted image that I have chosen to look at in this section but arguably the most reproduced image of all these famous photographs, but what do I see when I look at it apart a slight sense of vertigo and the hope that those guy weren’t afraid of heights and never slipped of fall. I think it’s a sense that as a race (apart from being mad) we really conquered our environment, the sky really is the limit as they say and that we have no fear of taking on there immense challenges and overcoming them. I also see freedom everyone must have said at some point in their lives “I wish I could fly” pretty much the ultimate feeling of freedom and how much closer to it (apart from flying in a plain) can you get than this?

 

 

 

 

                                                           Title: Fire on Marlborough street (1975)
Photographer: Stanley J. Forman

This harrowing image of a woman and a young child falling from a building was taken on the 22^nd July 1975. the photograph Stanley J. Forman was working for the Boston Herald American newspaper at the time when a police scanner picked up an emergency: “Fire on Marlborough Street!” Forman Climbed on a the fire truck and arriving on the scene her took this shot of a young woman, Diana Bryant, and a very young girl, Tiare Jones when they fell helplessly to the ground after the fire escape the where trying to use to get to safety collapsed. Diana Bryant was pronounced dead at the scene. The young girl lived. Despite a heroic effort, the fireman who tried to grab them had been just seconds away from saving the lives of both. Photo coverage from the tragic event garnered Stanley Forman a Pulitzer Prize. But more important, his work paved the way for Boston and other states to mandate tougher fire safety codes. I’m not quite sure what this photo is trying to say if it conveys any deeper meaning to the viewer and I don’t think that Forman had it in mind at the time that it would I just think he was in (debatably) the right place at (again debatably) the right time and was just doing his job and documenting what was going on but it doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a truly amazing photograph. I think there’s something quite strange and almost mesmerizing about an image that freeze frame for the viewer the last few moments of a persons life, it’s a bit like a cliff hanger where we want to know what happened next and we stand staring at a photograph looking intently at it like as if we stair at it long enough it might just move and real what happened next.

 

 

 

 

Title: The Napalm Girl (most common title) (1972)
Photographer: Nick Út

This photo of Kim Phuc (full name Phan Thị Kim Phúc) was taken just after South Vietnamese planes bombed her village in a savage Napalm attack. She had only lived because she tore off her burning clothes and ran for her life. AP Photographer Nick Út captured this Pulitzer Prize winning image of her badly burnt and as you can see looking like she must be in agonizing pain emerging from the village along with other members of her family. This photo has become one of the most famous and memorable photos of Vietnam. This is an amazing photograph, very shocking its not everyday you see a badly burnt nine year old girl running naked for her life so why would so many people connect with or remember or further so want to remember an image like this. The one thing that strikes me when looking at this image is its almost religious connections. The pose that Kim Phuc is in as she is running arms out stretched to her side and the fact that she’s naked to me personally resembles the Christian symbol of Jesus crucified on the cross. maybe this is why this photograph is so memorable because it resembles arguably the most famous religious symbol.  

conclusion – after looking at all these very famous images the one thing I have distinctly noticed that they all seem to have in common is that they are all in some way or another ‘shocking’. Every single image I have looked at has an element in it that shocks the viewer, if it’s the depiction of the last few seconds of a persons life, a person burning they selves to death or even the shocking fact that people building skyscrapers in the 30’s had no safety equipment. It seems to me that this shock factor as it occurs in every image must in some way have something to do with the fact that the images are so memorable. I think that for my next step I need to look into the relation between shock and memory.