The Life Span of Iconic War and Conflict Photography

• In Event: The Life Span of Iconic Photographs

Abstract

I am interested in transformations in the norms of iconicity that have defined war photography in the global conflicts of the 20th century and in “humanitarian” conflicts of the 21st century conflicts. To this end, I explore the ways in which changes in the technological/ institutional conditions of war photography and in the conduct of warfare have shaped these norms of iconicity – moving us away from a visual language of technological and physical prowess and towards a visual language of self-reflexivity, injury and trauma.

Lilie Chouliaraki is Professor of Media and Communications. She has written extensively on distant suffering as a problem of communication and is the author of, among others, The Spectatorship of Suffering (2006/2011); The Soft Power of War (ed, 2008) and The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-humanitarianism (2013).

Author

• Lilie Chouliaraki, London School of Economics and Political Science