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7 Iconic Photographs That Proliferated In Popular Culture
Many iconic images have been captured when we look at the history of photography through a big lens. Many of these images have helped to shape our world by creating awareness and a common consciousness about certain social issues. Achieving this with photographs is great for any photographer, but some pictures have gone the extra mile and have become embedded in our culture in a symbolic way. They have achieved the powerful state of becoming a symbol of pop culture, which is far beyond what their creators could ever have imagined what their pictures could be. On this occasion, I want to talk about seven images that, in my opinion, broke the barrier of being just iconic photographs to become symbols. Images we have seen on murals, signs, t-shirts, souvenirs, and practically any commercial good. These images are the equivalent of the viral content of our today, but have a more indelible and enduring nature than the ephemerality of most of our present-day content.
V-J Day in Times Square — Alfred Eisenstaedt — 1945
The first image on our list is the iconic scene captured by Alfred Eisenstaedt (Victor Jorgensen took a picture of the same scene, but Eisenstaedt’s composition had more exposure), that marked the end of the Second World War. Soldiers and nurses were key during the bloody confrontations of war, and these two…