america adrift

During this latest “financial crisis” there have been some fascinating images which communicate possible alternative narratives to the daily press stories. The image above from this NYT article particularly caught my attention. Here, despite whatever giveaway, formerly known as the bail-out, “rescue” the Senate may approve on Wednesday, the message in this photo seems clear. We are staring down the abyss. Not only are we looking down the cliff but from this angle, we’ve already walked out past the ledge. This is the moment Willie Coyote realizes he’s about to free fall into oblivion.

More after the jump, click on image for better resolution. Continue Reading »

Photograph by Matt Stoller

Ben Shahn’s “Register to Vote” poster from the 1940s

Photography by Ben Shahn for the FSA, 1935 - Arkansas

Photography by Ben Shahn for the FSA: Fiddlin’ Bill Henseley, North Carolina, 1937

Constitution, 2008
8 x 25 feet in five panels
Depicts 83,000 Abu Ghraib prisoner photographs, equal to the number of people who have been arrested and held at US-run detention facilities with no trial or other due process of law, during the Bush Administration’s war on terror. Continue Reading »

Michael Shaw has a very important post about the US military censorship of photojournalists in Iraq. Michael (and co.) do an incredible job deconstructing and analyzing the most current images within their broader social and political contexts. But this post, which includes a stunning, provocative photograph, is about the broader social and political context. Robert Hariman has a complementary piece worth checking out here.

Also, some of you may be aware that Vanity Fair produced their own “satire” cover which parodies the now infamous New Yorker Obama cover. Btw, Vanity Fair, like the New Yorker is a Condé Nast publication.

See Michael’s take here.

And Historiann slams it out of the park with, Limp “satire” begets more limpness.

Recently we at The Atlantic Community have been honored by a bit of attention from the excellent photo journalism and public culture blog No Caption Needed. NCN is run by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites who authored one of the only sustained books charting the emergent field of cultural iconology, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture and Liberal Democracy. Hariman is a professor in the Dept. of Communication Studies at Northwestern U.; Lucaites is a professor of rhetoric and public culture at Indiana U. Together they have created an indispensable volume for anyone interested in the functions and construction of iconic images in the public sphere. Here is a reproduction of the table of contents:

This photo (h/t The Bag) immediately struck me as it provides a very interesting visual narrative to an analysis I recently wrote on some contemporary political appropriations of Abraham Lincoln. I plan to discuss this image in more detail, along with my article which will be available after the weekend.

In the meantime, go check out The Bag’s post, “Taking A Lesson,” which apart from providing an interesting reading of the image demonstrates a very telling case of the politics of photojournalist editorializing.

Why you are there, also see this very provocative post, “Stereotypes From The White Corporate Media: The Black Man Gets His Hands On The Presidency.”

Today is Memorial Day in the US. Doubtful there was any “coverage” by our local media here. But given the recent importance we’ve been placing on visual analysis, iconic studies, and semiotics I thought this image, featured today on the mainpage of John McCain’s campaign website, might be interesting to toss around.

I’ve recently been re-reading Robert Hariman’s and John Louis Lucaites’ exceptional book, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture and Liberal Democracy.

Chapter 4, “Performing Civic Identity,” specifically explores the iconic image of the flag raising at Iwo Jima.

Hariman and Lucaites argue that the flag raising image creates three simultaneous civic narratives based on three deeply embedded ideological traditions within America’s political and cultural history. I’m pulling this from memory so please correct me if I don’t get it exactly right.
1. civic republicanism
2. egalitarianism
3. nationalism

From the photo above, its obvious that the man holding the flag is none other than John McCain. Given that John McCain’s campaign has embraced militaristic and nationalistic themes for his campaign an image like this is not unique for McCain on its first read.

However, I couldn’t help seeing this image in relation to the iconic Iwo Jima photo. There’s McCain, standing atop a barren hilltop amongst an eerily similar barren landscape like that depicted in the Iwo Jima.

What do you think? Is McCain relying on the cultural memory of the Iwo Jima image here?
If so, does the image meet any of the three qualities listed above? For Hariman and Lucaites the Iwo Jima worked and continues to work because it simultaneously embodies all three of those traits which can be read by different and competing identities within the body politic. For me, any expression of egalitarianism or popular liberal democracy is removed from the context in the McCain photo. Its even difficult to read a civic republican virtue into the visual narrative. I’m left with a libertarian ultra-individualistic patriotism as the sole narrative. Perhaps the creators thought a lone McCain would strengthen the “maverick” meme. I don’t know, I think this image fails terribly in comparison to the original, if that is what it was based upon.

What do you think?