How iconic news images travel: republishing and reframing historic photographs in Israeli newspapers

Abstract

Iconic photographs are symbolically dense images characterized by broad circulation over time and recognition by large publics. Following this definition, we track the republication and reframing, over nearly 70 years, of 15 news photographs previously identified as most recognized by the Israeli public. Distinguishing between “discrete icons” (singular photographs of particular scenes) and “aggregate icons” (where several variants of the same event are continually reproduced), our quantitative and qualitative analyses show that iconic images are both resistant to the passing of time and kept in motion through renewed media use. We identify four “iconic modalities,” corresponding to different ways in which iconic status and meanings are achieved, transformed, or denied through republishing and reframing. This concept improves our understanding of iconicity as a fluctuating material and symbolic process, whereby the circulation of images not only produces shifts in meaning, but constructs powerful aggregative frameworks of collective visual memory.