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Recollecting Images: How Age and Education Affect Memories of Iconic News Photos
A. Cohen
1
, S. Boudana
1
, P. Frosh
2
1
Tel Aviv University, Communication, Tel Aviv, Israel
2
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Communication and Journalism, Jerusalem, Israel
Will the picture of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler found drowned on a Turkish beach, be recycled by the media and recollected by people in one, ten or fifty
years time? Will it become an iconic photograph, like the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima, Accidental Napalm, or the Tank Man in Tiananmen Square? Seemingly
etched into the fabric of collective memory, iconic photos possess broad political and moral significance, focus public attention and catalyze audience
discussion, and circulate extensively across media platforms. Over time they become, according to Harriman and Lucaites (2003),“known for being known.”
However, while scholars have given accounts of the replication and canonization of “historic” iconic photographs of news events by media and cultural
institutions, almost no research has empirically explored whether and how ordinary individuals actually identify and remember them. How are people’s
responses and recollections pattered across different social groups and age cohorts, and how do they vary for images depicting domestic and foreign events?
What might it mean for theories of collective and“media memory”(Neiger et al., 2013) and the presumed mnemonic power of visual media, if there is con‑
siderable variability in how audiences’recall these images? This paper offers insights from a two-stage Israeli project addressing these questions. It focuses
not on the nature and content of iconic news photos which have been previously studied, but on the way individuals recall and interpret such images. Based
on 13 homogeneous age-based focus groups (ranging from 16–80) followed by an online survey of a representative sample of Jewish Israelis (n=1130)
participants were asked to identify and discuss 30 domestic and foreign photographs classified as famous by the literature and by the photographers
and historians we had also interviewed. Our findings show significant variability in both the correct and erroneous identification of such pictures, and in
the ways they are remembered: - Rarity of society-wide iconic photographs. Only a handful of images were widely recalled by large percentages of people,
and several images whose fame was seemingly self-evident (e.g., Abu Ghraib) were hardly recognized at all. - "Generational entelechies” (Volkmer 2006)
of shared memories formed at different life-stages. Findings indicate age-related and education-based factors in the recollection of the images accompa‑
nied by information-rich and emotionally-laden responses to different images among distinctive groups. For instance, a photograph associated with the as‑
sassination of Yitzhak Rabin was particularly powerful among participants in their 30s, who would have been teenagers at the time of the event. - Blurred
recalling of media formats. The recollection of media formats was often uncertain, with participants actively reflecting upon blurring distinctions between
singular iconic photographs and image-event complexes of multiple still pictures, television and video sequences, scenes from films, and online image
feeds. Such shifts occurred particularly around historical changes in media technologies experienced by participants. -The iconic primacy of trauma. Despite
many differences, most participants were preoccupied with images of violence and trauma (war, natural catastrophes), a characteristic which emerged as
a topic for reflection and collective self-identification.