#iconism

"ICONISM  The tendency to “iconism” still exists, even today. 'Iconism' is the habit of “selecting”, “choosing”, or “finding” the image that “stands out”, the image that is “the important one”, the image that “says more”, the image that “counts more” than the others. In other words, the tendency to iconism is the tendency to “highlight”; it’s the old, classical procedure of favouring and imposing, in an authoritarian way, a hierarchy. This is not a declaration of importance about something or somebody, but a declaration of importance directed at others. The goal is to establish a common importance, a common weight, a common measure. But iconism and highlighting also have the effect of avoiding the existenceof differences, of the non-iconic and of the non-highlighted. In the field of war and conflict images, this  leads to choosing the “acceptable” for others. It’s the “acceptable” image that stands for another image, for all other images, for something else, and perhaps even for a non-image. This image or icon has to be, of course, the correct, the good, the right, the allowed, the chosen - the consensual image. This is the manipulation. One example is the icon, much discussed (even by art historians), of the “Situation Room” in Washington during the killing of Bin Laden by the Navy Seals in 2011. I refuse to accept this image as an icon: I refuse its iconism, and I refuse the fact that this image - and all other “icons” - stands for something other than itself. To fight iconism is the reason why looking at images of destroyed bodies is important