Searching for the nation’s most iconic photograph…

…As seen by the UK’s National Media Museum.

A very hard task if you ask me…

Searching for the nation’s favourite iconic image is never going to be an easy task, not quite a popularity contest like music charts, but not quite a free vote as the top ten list is already compiled for us by the National Media Museum.

Dorothea Lange

The pre-selected short list of ten shots that are presented to us are an interesting mix of the instantly and unforgettable Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, California (who could refute the iconic credentials of such an image), to a more, perhaps, interesting choice of Harold Edgerton’s Bullet through Jack of Diamond.

Harold Edgerton’s Bullet

Faye Godwin and Ansel Adams are present representing landscape work, Julia Margaret Cameron’s Iago perhaps refers to the historical significance of her and her contemporaries’ work, and thankfully lifts the ‘historically significant’ image out of just that category and into one of aesthetic consideration/appreciation; that this image was taken in 1867 when photography was still in its infancy is testament to Cameron.

Julia Margaret Cameron

All the words you might use to extol the virtues of the work by Adams and Godwin nominated somehow seem more accessible, maybe being landscapes we are more used to discussing them, like painting, in this way. Their landscapes (more so their wider body of landscape work), variously described as a kind of personal poetry and in Godwin’s case later published in conjunction with it, lend themselves very well to iconic status by being exemplary examples of their kind. As well as, when further investigated, often illustrating a political awareness coupled with some of the most ‘gracious and yet haunting’ landscape work ever produced.

Jumping over 100 years from Cameron and via Larry Barrow’s South Vietnam, Operation Prairie image, we reach Martin Parr’s New Brighten, Merseyside, from The Last Resort 1983-1986 and Richard Billingham’s Untitled (Flying Cat) . It is great that both these photographers often elevate the ‘everyday’ to the iconic. Citibank Prize and Turner Prize nomination may recognise Billingham’s work in the eyes of the wider art community but it is not only this that grabs your attention, what I find hypnotic are images (when you look at Billingham’s past work as well) that often capture what you know must happen, if you think about it, but what you rarely see. This contrasts well, I think, to Edgerton’s Bullet, where the advances in technology allowed Edgerton to experiment with his marriage of ‘art and science’, undoubtedly highly engaging, whereas Billingham appears to have done almost the opposite, using a disposable camera and out-of-date film, both resulting in what in this context is seen as an iconic image. So, how do you recognise an iconic image?

Martin Parr

Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Kasebier also feature in these ‘top ten’ of iconic images. And I guess all images shown can be championed for their iconic status but what makes an image iconic, how do we arrive at that judgement and harder still decide which is our own most iconic shot? I think that might be more interesting than the public vote that will decide the ultimate ‘winner’.

Spanning nearly the whole of photographic history all these images arguably have inspired contemporaries and generations after them so have the admiration and recognition to warrant the ‘title’. Perhaps by being politically aware and by acting as a social commentary of the time brings something extra to the viewer as well as overall aesthetic, elevating it above other contemporaries work. Being iconic I guess presumes a certain quality of composition and relevant technique as a given.

Whether you or I would choose this selection, and I personally would like to see a few others included here, is debatable, but what you have to admire is how well the images communicate with us now. A personally admired and professionally recognised image can certainly become iconic and I don’t believe that a photographer needs to have a political awareness in order to produce an iconic image; however, news and popular culture assist in raising the profile of an image surely adding to its iconic tag.

Fay Godwin

Maybe it is capturing something in the camera that transcends what is merely depicted and without moving onto another whole chapter on semiotics etc. maybe the image needs to talk to us and represent something to us to be come ‘more’ iconic.

If pushed to name my most iconic image I am leaning towards Dorothea Lang’s. What a composition and story, although the more I write the more I am inclined to think that the exposure an image has gained and context are as influential as personal choice. If I were curator of this, narrowing my choice to merely a top ten would be hard enough.

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The Emerging Products Picture Editor position is only a year old here at the big G. There are two of us doing it, based in New York City, at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. Chris Hondros shot this picture from the ‘bubble’, where we sit in the big, dirty, noisy urban jungle:

Basically, we select News, Sports and Entertainment images that are wholly owned, publish them to a third party platform that sends the product called Picturecast each morning and afternoon to cell phone subscribers in the USA. It is available to subscribers on Sprint, Cingular, Boost and Nextel for a monthly fee. It is like publishing a little newspaper each day, and with few restrictions, we can use all the images on our Editorial site. We have to keep up with breaking news so it’s all ready for publishing time (8am and 6pm EST). The News screen looks like this:

Editing for little mobile screens restricts our choices, one thing to consider is how it will read. It’s great when we get great jubo shots like this:

But the emotion on the faces is not going to read well small, so we choose another shot or crop it. Another consideration is our audience range. Lots of 13-year old kids out there have their own cell phones and we must be careful not to offend. Needless to say, although we had fun stuff a few weeks ago from AVN Expo that Justin Sullivan shot, we did not use it. My personal favorite finds are animals, but when we have awesome images from award shows like the Oscars or Olympus Fashion Week, it is like being a kid in a candy store. We also provide Cingular with a selection of NFL and College football images for their ‘Week in Pictures’. There are other exciting things in the pipeline, which I probably should not let out of the bag just yet. Watch this space.

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Amy Sussman/Getty Images

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are fashion chameleons constantly being photographed for magazines in search of the next big trend. Photographers have always had trouble identifying which twins was which but it seems like the girls haves traded looks identified with them for most of 2006. Mary-Kate was known as the honey-blonde-boho-babe with loads of extensions, Ashley, the blonde vamp, but sisterly envy took over and the two have traded places with MK sporting a bleach-blonde goth vibe and Ashley displaying brown tones more in tune with her natural hair color (almost a match to stunning full-brows). In any event, the girls are constantly fascinating and we can wait to see what their next look will be!

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Brad Barket/Getty Images

Jude Law- free life has done Sienna Miller a world of good. Finishing four films since Factory Girl, Miller has weathered all her storms looking fabulous and with a smile through it all, even a small snafu like leaving a gimble on her sweater!

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Dave M Benett/Getty Images

Mulberry goes crazy for Giles!Giles and Stuart Vever’s guests were seduced last night as they stepped into a thirsty red room against a backdrop of black PVC studded walls. As the vodka cocktails and pink champagne began to flow, everyone rocked along to the bondage theme. Thandie Newton & Eva Mendes arrived flashing their “Mulberry for Giles Bags” – the black PVC studded clutches have the ability to sex up any outfit. Giles has definitely injected sex, rock and roll and youth into Mulberry’s latest collection. Watch out for stud over-load on the London fashion circuit – cuffs, bags, bracelets, you name it, you stud it!

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Ash on the car in the morning, the smell of burning Eucalypt, it must be bushfire season again. Just when I thought a lazy Sunday afternoon by the beach might be on the cards, the call came in: “Bush fires are threatening homes north of Sydney”. I had, earlier in the day, suspected a bushfire emergency might emerge, as the outside conditions were very hot, very dry, and very windy, kind of like standing inside a hair dryer.

Ian Waldie/Getty Images

Step one was to pack the car with water, lots of it, and my regulation bush fire fighting protective clothing consitsing of fire resistant jacket, trousers, gloves, helmet, goggles and boots. Basically the same as the Rural Fire Service uses, but with a luminescent “MEDIA” patch emblazoned on the back.

Next was to pinpoint the fire front on a map, and try to get to it. Australian bushfires, whilst burning vast areas of land, are extremely tricky to get to, usually because they are burning in pretty inaccessable terrain. I had heard on the radio that families had been evacuated from the popular picnic area of Bobbin Head, so that’s where I was headed. Police had set up roadblocks around the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park to prevent rubberneckers, tourists, and media from entering. Only residents who wanted to get home to defend their properties were allowed into the restricted area. My way forward barred, I drove in a loop around the national park, to find another roadblock but this one was attended by the Rural Fire Service (RFS) instead of the police. The RFS media officer Rebel Talbert gathered together some of the assembled media for a quick briefing, and then herded us into her 4×4 for a trip to see what was happening on the fire ground.

We found several crews from many districts of Sydney with their fire tenders, conducting a back-burning excercise in the national park. Stepping through the brittle undergrowth, it’s little wonder how this material provides fire with potentially explosive raw fuel. The leaf litter on the ground is ankle deep and bone dry. The back burning operation seems to me like a tightrope walking exercise. the RFS are deliberately lighting fires in these conditions, and trying to keep them controlled, so that when the firefront eventually reaches the area, the backburning has depleted much of the fuel and the fire is easier to control.

Ian Waldie/Getty Images

With alarming speed huge flames rear up from a tree that has caught fire in the canopy nearby, and the firefighters rush to hose it down before it can leap over the road and escape into the bush beyond. They succeed, with glowing embers and ash raining down from the force of the high-pressure hose on the burining tree trunk. Eyes are peeled for evidence of an ember attack over the road, where a fire can suddendly burst back into life. A water-bombing aircraft is audible overhead, huge sky cranes that can carry a payload of 9,000 litres of water to dump directly on the firefront. Smoke renders everything beyond a few metres invisible though, and the chopper comes and goes. Time for a drink of water, and the backburning continues down into the valley.

Ian Waldie/Getty Images

On a different edge of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park a couple of hours later, I arrive to see streets crowded with people who have come out of their homes to watch a spectacle that is awesome. The ridge of the national park beyond this small enclave of homes is ablaze, and the entire sky is orange in the dusk. “I’m going to go and get the hose again” says a resident as the sight fills her with worry for her home, and hurries away to hose down her house roof and guttering.

In all, the RFS save all the homes that were threatened, and controlled the fire within a couple of days, with the help of some friendlier weather. Disaster averted, this time.

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You realize watching this just how staged all of the wedding imagery you typically see really is, even when it is ‘behind-the-scenes’. Kind of funny, kind of scary. This inspired my newest business-idea-that-I’ll-never-get-around-to-but-should-be-done: Stylist 911.  fyi – you can skip about the first 1/4 of the video.
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