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What Makes an Image Iconic?

Wed., February 15, 2006

'Migrant Mother' by Dorthea Lange.

You’ve probably seen this photo before; it’s Dorthea Lange’s Migrant Mother. You may have seen it in a history textbook, in an art, photography or photojournalism class, or in an museum. Maybe you know you’ve seen it before, but can’t recall where. For you, the image may represent “the Dust Bowl,” “the New Deal” or “the Great Depression.” Lange took five other photos that day in 1936 of the same mother and children. She also took photos of other migrant mothers, as did some of the 21 other photographers in her Farm Security Administration group. Certainly many other photographers have captured images of weary mothers and children.

So why that photo?

For discussion on this issue, I went to the The New School’s Tishman Auditorium tonight to hear a panel session, “What Makes an Image Iconic?”

The moderator was the director of exhibitions for the Aperture Foundation, the nonprofit organization and publisher. The panel was comprised of the director of the George Eastman House, a contemporary photography collector and the director of photographs at the auctioneer Phillips de Pury & Company.

The auctioneer argued iconic photos are almost purely market driven and he made an interesting case. Looking up key photographers in the Price Database of artnet, he found that that different prints of the same image surface at auction time and time again and command the highest bids: William Eggleston’s The Red Ceiling and Tricycle, Ansel Aadms’ Moonrise Over Hernandez, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Michel Gabriel, Rue Mouffetard and Hyères, 1932, and so on. But Migrant Mother cracks this argument; unlike those other images, there are no known clearance or cost restrictions on reproducing Lange’s original photo.

A confluence of factors would seem to be at work in making an image iconic: popularity and promotion of a certain photographer, often a passing of time after the photo has been taken and critical acclaim slowly builds, a highly original image presented in a certain symmetry, a capture of emotion or of a single startling moment in time. The collector, who had a thick Spanish accent and a colorful grasp of English, defined it as an image that “turned his stomach,” although he clearly didn’t mean in a negative sense.

One obvious reason for an image’s iconography may have been sitting right in front of me. An iconic image is one a large number of people have seen, and who is more responsible for that than the critic, educator or publisher who writes or talks about it; the museum director who displays it; the auctioneer who gives it value; and the influential buyer or seller involved in that transaction. In his defense, the museum director stressed that the Eastman House doesn’t play the icon game in that its mission is to acquire the complete works of a photographer, not piecemeal greatest-hits. But you can’t tell me that when that director plans an exhibit, say of Albert Weston’s photos, he’s going to leave out Pepper No. 30, a photo the director also happened to mention is a personal favorite. It made me think of the film I saw recently on art curator Henry Geldzahler, who promoted the art he loved, only to see it commoditized.

Intriguingly, the panel claimed that there have been no iconic pure-art photos since the early ’70s, the same time the market for “classic” photography began to take off. There have been iconic political or journalistic photos since then; the panel cited the photo of the lone protestor standing before the line of tanks on Tiananmen Square. Audience members made cases for the hooded Abu Gharib prisoner photo and the photo of firemen raising the flag at Ground Zero, but others countered that there are many such prisoner and 9/11 images that could be considered equally iconic.

I’d add that iconography can be debilitating, blinding a viewer to other works by the same artist, or of a lesser known artist, that may be as good if not better. I would think that after stewing in limelight long enough, an image could even lose its impact, iconic or otherwise.

February 17, 2006 Update: This wasn’t mentioned by anyone at the session, but according to a Photo District News article I came across today (“Steichen Photo Breaks Auction Record” by Daryl Lang), the 1904 photo by Edward Steichen, The Pond-Moonlight, sold for $2.9 million at Sotheby’s in New York on February 14. That price is more than double that of the previous auction-sale record, which was set by a Richard Prince photo. Two other images exceeded the Prince record that same night, both prints of Georgia O’Keefe from 1919 by photographer Alfred Stieglitz: Nude and Hands. They sold for $1.36 million and $1.47 million, respectively. Interestingly, Steichen and Stieglitz are both well-known, highly regarded photographers and the photos are representative of their style; however, they’re not particularly iconic selections.

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