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.

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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Fashion designer Thom Browne worked with artist Anthony Goicolea on this haunting, hypnotic video:

Thom Browne

Anthony Goicolea

With iPods, portable DVD players, laptops, Blackberries, et al now the rule not the exception, we strive for total control over what input our minds receive. In tandem, studies have surfaced that show the perils of multi-tasking, while the spiritual communities maintain that the key to a happy life is mindfulness, or giving one’s full attention to the present moment. Here’s a Flickr set that quite hilariously and horrifically shows what can happen if we let our techno toys usurp too much of our focus:

Via

L.A. art legend Mike Kelley’s newest work is a roughly 3-hour-long musical on film called Day is Done, and is screening tonight & tomorrow night at the Redcat Theater in L.A. (part of Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall). It’s the “world theatrical premiere”, although it was already shown about this time last year at Mr. Kelley’s New York gallery.
The film consists of dramatic enactments of various photographs found in high school yearbooks, woven together to form a narrative.  Kelley often mines his own personal history for artistic material, with a knack for zeroing in on the more psychologically charged moments.  So it’s no surprise then that the volatile terrain of high school is the focus here, that emotionally-fraught period of unruly pubescence vying with budding self-awareness (in a word: awww-kwerrrd).

Jeff Han demonstrating the use of a Multi-touch display. For the first time, it feels like a visual interface that actually matches the physical scale its user.
To see a little more information on computing’s humble beginnings.

Not that one, if He/She even exists… Let’s discuss the trend of artists remaining anonymous and/or trying to keep their identity a mystery. It’s encompassing many forms of creative expression such as art, music, literature: Banksy, Gorillaz, JT Leroy all come to mind.

Banksy’s Sweeping it Under the Carpet - photographed by Dave Etheridge-Barnes/Getty Images; Gorillaz artwork photographed by Scott Barbour / Getty Images; JT Leroy photographed by Franco Origlia/Getty Images.
Banksy, in part a guerilla graffiti/stencilling artist, could be just trying to avoid jail - I don’t know the laws in Britain, but I imagine graffiti is frowned upon. Animated band Gorillaz has some known human members, some supposedly possibly still unknown, who really knows. Writer JT Leroy was exposed as a hoax by The New York Times —the person appearing in disguise in public not being the person who wrote the stories which were in reality a fake memoir … it’s all a bit confusing. With all these examples, and with others, there is plenty of opinions, facts, and ideas.

And speculation, and questions—-which of these are earnest attempts to promote a philosophy, to put an idea above a person? (Who IS John Galt, anyway?) Which are shrewd marketing moves, intended to create publicity -and therefore demand- by seeming to shun it? With surveillance cameras everywhere, and the public ga-ga for Googling, are any of these last-ditch efforts to hold onto some identity and a little anonymity, lest they end up getting ripped a new one on Gawker Stalker for not looking stunning when they walk down the street?

Speaking of stunning, I can’t believe Diana Prince’s co-workers didn’t know she was Wonder Woman. They put the “Oh?” in oblivious! I mean, c’mon. Wonder Woman doesn’t even wear a mask. Clark Kent as Superman, too. Honestly!

Warner Bros./Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Banksy

Banksy - Wikipedia

Gorillaz

JT Leroy

While peeking at photographer’s web sites, these two pictures got a giggle outta me.

Asha Schechter

Heather Oppelt

It’s rare that my “Texas ex-es” email me something in the least bit worthwhile, but this is a classic of amateur photography, sure to be in the next time capsule that we launch into deep space as an introduction to humanity. In another life whoever did this would be making millions in advertising instead of duct-taping their own kid to the wall for kicks…

These words can be music to an artist’s ears. The latest group to split with their record label over “creative differences” - which usually means the artists want to be creative, the executives don’t - is The Format. Upon hearing the news that their sophomore album would not be released unless the band made some non-negotiable changes, the band said nuh-uh, threw a party and formed their own record label, The Vanity Label; and marketed their music through word of mouth, wild live shows, and this “internet” thing. The album, Dog Problems, features a song called “The Compromise” which wittily details their interaction with their former record label, and the title track is an anthem of grand orchestrations and impressive Freddie Mercury-esque vocals. Here is the “Dog Problems” video, which I think is amazing (and must have been a blast to make)
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Not long ago, Fiona Apple started appearing in public with the word “Slave” written on her cheek, and changed her name to — no wait, that was Prince, circa 1994, protesting his contract with Warner. What Fiona Apple did recently was enter into a stalemate with Sony over her latest album, until her fans cried “Free Fiona” — somehow a copy got released on the internet, then a reworked album, and finally a happy public and, I’m assuming a happy Sony— Extraordinary Machine was one of the success stories of 2005. The song “Please Please Please” contains the lyrics “Give us something familiar/ Something similar / To what we know already…”, mocking her record label. Here is the video for “Not about love” — again, a low-budget, high-concept, original…
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The Format and Fiona Apple are young creative musicians more interested in writing original, personal songs and exploring new genres rather than trying to look like and sound like so many others. I suspect in those record-label executive meetings, they wanted Apple to ooooh and aaaaah and show her belly-button more — skankify may be the word — and they wanted The Format to get aggro on a guitar and ditch the french horns. The race to the bottom, the underestimation of the audience, the striving for the lowest common denominator equals the end of risk-taking, creativity, of originality. These won’t be the last cases of the “creative differences”, but the trend is towards letting the public, the people with the money buying the product, decide for themselves. Who are some new musicians creating original sounds? Let us know…

The Format

Fiona Apple
Related: Atlas Shrugged may actually become a movie, starring li’l Angelina Jolie….