Ok, how to phrase this, I
think there are several ways in which a shot becomes 'iconic' and its all down to who or how it presented to the people as a whole.
Obvious iconic shots often just start out as damn good pictures of 'iconic' people, so the Che image, Marilyn, and many more - such great 'posed' photography will be bought by news agencies, advertising agengies, etc etc, time and time again and will become so associated with the person themselves, the two are hard to separate. Its almost the same with some others where its pure and simple marketing, someone mentioned the tennis player shot and I could add in [being a woman] the original mono of a naked torso'd man cradling the baby looking into its face. They are great captures, which were then marketed to appeal to the natural male or female mind/heart. The 'Athena' shots as I have always referred to them, because way back in my teens that was where you could buy them from as posters.
Finally there are those shots that usually feature no one we know, are not 'poster' material, were certainly not 'posed', but DO stick with you forever once you have seen them. These are the 'real' iconic shots for me, the ones you look at and you stop and think and wonder how mankind has survived its own self destruct mechanism for so long. A capture of a single moment from hundreds of moments in one war zone or another, or one natural disaster or the next, they are the ones that I can't explain the reasoning behind. Not properly anyway, but maybe its just because ultimately, human nature is to nurture and seeing so much distress, or fear, or humiliation, laid bare is something we intrinsically cannot ignore - maybe its this inbuilt mechanism [the lingering leftovers of our ancestors self preservation urge] that has so far stopped us completely self destructing..... :shrug:
ok, steam coming from ears, my brain is complaining its saturday and it should NOT be having to work this hard....
