The Emergence of Iconic Depth: Secular Icons in a Comparative Perspective

Refugees as icons: Culture and iconic representation

“…In 2012, he co‐edited Iconic Power (Alexander et al, ), which assembled theoretical reflections and empirical case studies from European and American authors, including the German art historians Boehm and Belting. Although the book did not offer a coherent methodological framework, its contributions explored the various ways in which visuality and matter can be approached by cultural sociologists, among other things to understand the role of “humanitarian” or “secular” icons (Binder, ; Kurasawa, ).…”

“…Whereas the semiotic term “icon” refers to all signs based on resemblance (Peirce, ), a more specific use of “icon,” inspired by religious icons, refers to powerful images of high visibility and almost “sacred” quality, so‐called “secular icons” (Binder, ; Brink, ; Maynard, ). In context of the refugee photography, we can also speak of “humanitarian icons” (Kurasawa, ).…”

“…In the case of secular icons, it is the icon that calls for a narrative and not the narrative that makes the icon. There were futile efforts to find the man and his story behind the icon of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the hooded man on the box, and the story of the woman, who once was the naked girl in the famous photograph from the Vietnam War, became of interest only after the iconization of the image (Binder, , pp. 109, 112; cf.…”

One Good Turn Deserves Another

“…Some of these issues have emerged with the “ethical turn” in fields devoted primarily to visual studies: the rights of subjects of pictures, for example, or the ethics of image‐making and research on visuality (Gross, Katz, and Ruby ). Others emerge from the “visual turn” in philosophy, including sustained attention to Levinas's claim that “ethics is an optics” (Kenaan ), attempts to make sense of the alternating appreciation and rejection of the value of pictures by Wittgenstein (Tripp and Schoellner ), and ongoing applications of the conception of iconicity developed most influentially by C. S. Peirce (Boehm and Mitchell ; Binder ). French theory has highlighted the shift to visibility and invisibility as the central issue in the technology of war (Virilio ) and the modern surveillance society (Foucault ), and speculated about future relations between artistic images, politics, and religion (Rancière ).…”

Icons of contention: The iconography of martyrdom and the construction of Coptic identity in post-revolutionary Egypt

“…Icons are a fundamental part of the religious and cultural identity of Eastern Christianity. In strictly ritual settings, icons function as ‘texts for the illiterate’ (Bevan, 1979: 126; Binder, 2012: 101) and act as ‘collective symbols’ that ‘attract the adoration and love of worshipers’ (Binder, 2012: 104). However, they also often respond to the cultural and political environment in which they are written, 1 both by communicating ‘a message and hope and encouragement’ to the believers who live through troubled times, and by conveying ‘possible messages of resistance to the dominant culture(s) in the historical period in which they were created’ (Moussa, 2016: 155).…”