Abstract
This study examines the case of a recent news ‘icon’, a celebrated product of photojournalism, Dylan Martinez's so-called ‘death in Genoa’. The picture shows a scene moments before the death by police gunfire of a protester during the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Genoa in July 2001. The image was chosen by news and political elites as a metonym for the antiglobalization movement. Fitting into the typical characteristics and assumptions of the news icon, it served less to show what happened than to direct public gaze and interpretations to framed ‘meanings’ that, in this instance, marginalized a strike against authority by establishing ‘protestor violence’ as the news lead. The study highlights news photography's interpretive role of historical events and their context and complexity.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 91-108 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Visual Communication |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2004 |
Keywords
- effects
- framing
- icon
- metonym
- news
- photojournalism
- protest
- schema
- signage
- spectacle