ICONIC PHOTOS

Photography And War Memory:  The understanding of war has been influenced by visual representations of conflict millennia before the arrival of Roger Fenton on the Crimean War battlefield.  The camera did, however, undoubtedly become a powerful new media for chronicling war and thus also for influencing historical memory.  Many photojournalists emphasized how the camera was revolutionary in its abilities to capture truth and thus bring back the realities of war.  Cultural historians, however, are more often tempted to shrink the difference between the photographer and the painter, and to describe both as very subjective artists whose work is then interpreted and reinterpreted by various viewers.

This brief exercise aims to focus a discussion about the relationship between photography and war memory by looking in at the history of a few of the most famous war photographs of the twentieth century.  The amount of information I have found for each photo varies considerably.  But browse through several of the web-sites and place each photograph in context.

Who was the photographer?  Who were the various people in the photograph?  Can you place the photo within a story-line that moves beyond the click of the camera?  What was the impact of the photograph at the time?  What is the "afterlife" of the image?  What did the photographer and the subjects of the photo think about the picture?  What happened to them in the days and years after the photo was taken?  How, if at all, did the image itself change their lives?

The Photos:

1)  DEATH OF LOYALIST MILITIAMAN FREDERICO BORRELL GARCIA, CERRO MURIANO (CORDOBA FRONT) [1936]

2)  RAISING OF THE FLAG ON IWO JIMA (1944)

3)  THE SOVIET FLAG OVER THE REICHSTAG (MAY 2, 1945

4)  TET OFFENSIVE STREET EXECUTION (1968)

5)  KIM PHUC (1972)

Some Other Iconic War Photos

 

 

 

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