Abstract:

Iconic photographs are powerful visual images representing historically important moments, events and persons. They guide the audience about the understanding of the events and how to remember the past and become the means of the ideological struggle for the speech value they have. The iconic photographs, unlike ordinary photographs, reach large audiences, play an important role in the structure of social memory. The processes of accessing the iconic value of photos in the study are addressed both in the traditional and digital media structure. In the traditional media structure, a photo must first meet with the audience by passing an editorial sketch to be iconic, while this process has changed with the breakdown of the unity of media professionals in the digital age. In the digital media that enables participating culture, iconic photographs appear with user practices, thus the photographs taken by ordinary citizens can also be iconized. In this study, the change in the digital age of the conditions that reveal the iconic photographs, which are a visual record of social memory, and the results of this change are open to discussion in the framework of the photo and memory relationship. In a visual universe in which different forms of vision can be included, the study concludes that social memory has the potential to be created in a more multiplicated and democratic way.

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