Martijn Kleppe

Promovendus

Research

Producing photographical Icons

Central aim and questions

In recent products of historiography (popular and scientific) ever more similar looking photographs of (mostly symbolic) happenings are used as an instrument to tell a story about important events or structural trends. Stories about social and political developments in, for instance, the Sixties and Seventies, are usually illustrated by the smoke bomb thrown at the wedding ceremony of crown princess Beatrix and the one and same picture of feminists who painted ‘boss in own belly’ on their naked stomach. Because of this use these photographs become iconic representations of the past. Since the Sixties, historical research pays more attendance to ‘the image’ as historical source. That is: mostly paintings and other representations (cartoons, moving film and television images). In this research project the aim is to describe and explain the process through which press photographs play a role in the general process of historical representation and the creation of a collective national memory. The research combines two fields of questions. Which images of Dutch history can be called iconic? What role do the journalistic and historical gatekeepers play in this process of iconisation?

Description of the project and research methods

The research project is a combination of theoretical aspects of historical representation and an empirical research of representation processes in the Netherlands. The first section consists of an inventory of possible Dutch iconic photographs. Therefore, all Dutch History textbooks for High school pupils, published between 1970 and 2000, are examined to see which photos are regularly published. In order to find these ‘historically significant photos’, all photographs were digitized and added into a database.

In the second section, several of these iconic photographs will be examined as a case-study. Description of the different kinds of representation of the same events is followed by describing, interpreting and explaining the reasons of the process by which preferred representations emerged as such. Counter to most of the historical studies that use image material as a historical source, the photograph will not be used as ‘historical evidence’. However, the photos are points of departure for the whole research project. So, the starting points of this second part of the research are the people who decide what pictures are made to be published: photographers, photo editors and picture historians form the subject of research. They are the main decision makers regarding the question what the audience is about to see, and in what way, about certain events or historical trends. Crucial questions that arise are: how do these gatekeepers got their own ‘picture’ of certain events? And what external factors – material, sociological, ideological etcetera - influenced their choices of picking ‘the picture’? For this research, instruments of media sociology are used, like the theories on gatekeepers (Gieber, White, Shoemaker).