Time, Mediation and Institutional Power in the Making of Iconic Images

• In Event: The Life Span of Iconic Photographs

Abstract

Can any photograph, regardless of content or form, become an iconic image? Certainly cultural traditions of picture making and the manner in which an image resonates with cultural structures of feeling must be seen as key conditions in the establishment of some iconic status. However, studies that celebrate the autonomy of exceptional iconic images and the “power of photography,” often fail to account for the institutional and industrial mediatization of culture through which these icons appear and are reproduced. Popular or iconic photographs do not emerge spontaneously or heterogeneously, and do not have a life of their own. They are the product of ideological formations and structures of feeling that are sustained over time through institutional mediation and control.

Michael Griffin writes on the history and theory of visual representation, the use and circulation of imagery in media systems, historical and journalistic representations of war. Three-time Chair of the Visual Communication Studies Division of the International Communication Association, he is Visual Communication Area Editor for The International Encyclopedia of Communication.

Author

• Michael S. Griffin, Macalester College