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

Although the case has been successfully argued for the utility and promise of a rhetorical approach to the study of visual images, such studies may still be regarded as exploratory in the sense that no dogma or dominant theorist dictates operative frameworks or methodological approaches. The interdisciplinary field of visual studies is still at an exciting moment, for exploration allows for stimulating conversations about potential perspectives applied to a variety of forms. One of the most recent books that makes an effort to shape that conversation is No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites. The book is actually the latest iteration of a series of presentations and publications that have occupied the authors during the past several years, although, through the authors' indefatigable research and intellectual curiosity, it is as much a coalescence of the state of collective rhetorical inquiry into visual images as it is an articulation of their own thesis on photographic images in the realm of public memory and consciousness.

Hariman and Lucaites focus their project on iconic photographs, defined as forms of public art that represent the "signature work of photojournalism" through a central position in the collective consciousness of the nation. According to the authors, such images perform civic and cultural work in signaling, defining, and maintaining a liberal democratic culture. The book's rhetorical impetus resides within the authors' assumption that iconic images, because they are artifacts that possess shared memory, understandings, and usages in the public sphere, can be read as markers of evolving political identities. As such, these iconic images demonstrate a cultural shift from a balanced liberal democracy to an expression of liberalism that increasingly deemphasizes the democratic process. The authors argue that the ideological work of iconic photographs centers on five vectors of influence: reproducing ideology, communicating social knowledge, shaping collective memory, modeling citizenship, and providing figural resources for communication action. Their methodology of discovery follows from these five dimensions of cultural meaning and social influence, as the authors consider aspects of aesthetic familiarity, civic performance, semiotic transcription, emotional scenarios, and contradiction and crisis that attend photographs presented as five case studies. Although one might argue with the range of images that are included or excluded from the authors' operative definition of "iconic" images, their case studies open (or reopen, as the case may be) a dialogue on important components of American visual culture.

To outline the dimensions of meaning in iconic photographs, the authors analyze eight specific examples of twentieth-century photojournalism in six chapters: Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother," Eisenstaedt's "Times Square Kiss" on V-E Day, Joe Rosenthal's "Flag-Raising at Iwo Jima" (and its twin from 9/11/01), the protest at Kent State, the flight of villagers from Trang Bang after an accidental napalm attack, the protester appearing to hold back tanks at Tiananmen Square, and the explosions of the Hindenberg and the Challenger.

Each discussion explicates one of the particular rhetorical dimensions of iconic images. These arguments will be familiar to those who have followed the authors' prior publications on the subject of iconic photography. Rather than simply reiterate prior analysis, however, Hariman and Lucaites extend their discussion through further consideration of the appropriation and remediation of these images in advertising, editorial cartoons, posters, and other formats—a significant topic of visual representation that has also been considered by other rhetorical scholars.

The book's effort to be theoretically encompassing is somewhat weakened by the applications of case studies. In some ways, the authors' conclusions about particular images seem too case-specific and idiosyncratic to be useful in developing a definitive theoretical approach. They even anticipate such impressions in their forthright recognition of the polysemic nature of interpretation.

Yet the book has much to offer in the way of potential pedagogical and theoretical frameworks for the study of images. Hariman and Lucaites clearly intend to...