No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy

by Robert Hariman

Book Overview

In No Caption Needed, Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites provide the definitive study of the iconic photograph as a dynamic form of public art. Their critical analyses of nine individual icons explore the photographs themselves and their subsequent circulation through an astonishing array of media, including stamps, posters, billboards, editorial cartoons, TV shows, Web pages, tattoos, and more. Iconic images are revealed as models of...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226316068
• ISBN13: 9780226316062
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.6" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Superb Study of Photojournalism and Democratic Culture

This is an important book. No Caption Needed speaks with eloquence to a topic of tremendous significance for contemporary society and the state of democratic public culture. It is a deeply interesting study relevant to academic and general audiences alike. Part history lesson and part analysis of where we are and where we might head, this book examines what democracy means in a culture oriented to the visual. It's one of those gems that makes the reader rethink the world by pointing out something important right under one's nose. Hariman and Lucaites examine iconic photographs, those images we see again and again and again in public life, and deftly reveal how they contribute to the rhythm of that life. In a series of chapters, they examine haunting and celebratory images that mark American history: the Times Square kiss, the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima and at Ground Zero, the Migrant Mother of the Great Depression, the Kent State massacre, the accidental napalm of the Vietnam War, the defiant man in Tiananmen Square, the Hindenburg and Challenger explosions. In addition to the book, Hariman and Lucaites also succeed in what is often a remarkably difficult task: hosting a relevant, engaging, and inviting blog, an arena for discussion and intelligent debate with wit and precision: No Caption Needed The review below has admirably captured the content of each chapter, so I will only mention its wide span of audiences. A critical scholarly book, No Caption Needed is a significant contribution to the burgeoning study of visual rhetoric, and should be mandatory reading for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in communication programs. It also addresses media and cultural studies, and would find a welcome place on the syllabi of journalism, anthropology, sociology, history, political science, art history, performance studies, education, and popular culture courses. This book--and the blog--should also not be missed by the political strategist, policy wonk, and political writer of any persuasion. It should also not be missed by the general reader. Hariman and Lucaites offer a corrective to the slew of cheap advice pouring out these days on how to seize control of the public sphere. They remind us about something much more important: the need to question how democracy is performed, and how its images inspire citizens to action--whether to prepare for war, to dissent, or even just to buy things. All of us, regardless of political affiliation, would find it rewarding to pause and consider the deep questions this book raises about the power of the image and the future of liberal democracy.

Looking at the ways iconic photographs matter in this country

This summer I have been having to constantly update the section of content pages in my Pop Culture class dealing with the "Media Lolitas," and I was thinking of just forgetting about trying to keep up with the escapades of Britney, Lindsay, and Paris and just have "before" and "after" photographs. My thinking was that the iconic images for each of these tabloid princesses were now having a shaved head, being passed out in a car, and crying on the way to jail, respectively. But then I picked up "No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy" by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites and was graphically reminded of what real iconic photographs look like and how such images have a profound impact on not only our popular culture but our popular democracy. This book looks at nine of the most famous photographs of the past seventy years to examine why these images are so powerful, explain how they remain meaningful across generations, and explore what they expose (and what goes unsaid). The book has nine chapters, most of which are significant revisions of essays examining particular photographs that have previously been published in academic journals (e.g., "Quarterly Journal of Speech"), and all of which represent an interest in how they function rhetorically, as established in the (1) Introduction. (2) "Public Culture, Icons, and Iconoclasts," lays out the author's interpretive method, which includes defining iconic photograph and then identifies five dimensions of cultural meaning that coalesce in the iconic image. Then we get to the case studies: (3) "The Borders of the Genre: Migrant Mother and the Times Square Kiss," looks at both Dorothea Lange's 1936 photograph of the "Migrant Mother" and Alfred Eisenstaedt's 1945 shot of the sailor kissing the nurse on VJ-Day (to be confused with naval photographer Victor Jorgensen's similar shot known as "Kissing Strangers" that has the virtue of being in the public domain and not owned by TIME-LIFE). The two iconic photos are presented as defining the "greatest" generation and what the authors call the "individuated aggregate," which means individuals who are used to depict collective experiences, in this case the Great Depression and winning World War II respectively. (4) "Performing Civic Identity: Flag Raising On Iwo Jima and Ground Zero" traces how the most popular image of World War II had been used both to celebrate the ideal of the citizen-soldier and to fault subsequent generations for their lack of virtue. With the image of the three firefighters raising a flag at ground zero in New York City, the original image is reprised in a new context. Having watched Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" again recently I found this essay particularly informative and insightful. The Vietnam War provides the context for the next two iconic photographs. (5) "Dissent and Emotional Management: Kent State" focuses on that particular photograph to demonstrate how photoj