A Close Reading of a Reportage Photograph: Nick Ut, “The Terror of War”
Stanisław Czekalski
stachcz@amu.edu.plAdam Mickiewicz University Poznań (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6312-8210
Abstract
The essay brings an exhaustive analysis of the semantically productive features discernible in the visual structure of the photograph The Terror of War, taken by Nick Ut near the mistakenly napalm-bombed town of Trảng Bàng. The unique nature of the famous photograph lies in the fact that, despite circumstances that were extremely restrictive in terms of the timing, perspective and composition of the frame, by a sheer stroke of luck it proved possible to capture on film an image that is extremely meaningful and semantically loaded. The semantics of the image was determined by the author by comparing this image and the original frame with a photograph of the same situation taken by Ut a moment later, as well as, above all, through a detailed analysis of the image’s structure. This structure reveals the essential characteristics of the language of narrative images, which constitute the close dependence of semantics on the rigour of composition as syntax. Through them, the photograph acquires a highly expressive iconic character, not only in the sense that it has become a kind of an “icon” perpetuating the image of a specific event in collective consciousness and historical memory, but above all in the sense defined by Max Imdahl’s conception of the iconics.
Keywords:
reportage photography, close reading, the iconic, napalm, Trảng Bàng, Nick UtReferences
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Authors
Stanisław Czekalskistachcz@amu.edu.pl
Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6312-8210
Stanisław Czekalski is an employee of the Institute of Art History of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. His scholarly interests focus on the theoretical and methodological issues of the research in art history, in particular issues of analysis the books Awangarda i mit racjonalizacji. Fotomontaż polski okresu dwudziestolecia międzywojennego [The Avant-garde and the Myth of Rationalisation. Polish Photomontage of the Interwar Period] (Poznań 2000), Intertekstualność i malarstwo. Problemy badań nad związkami międzyobrazowymi [Intertextuality and Painting. Problems of the Analysis of Interpictorial Relationships] (Poznań 2006), Jak wyjaśnić obraz? Metodologiczne tropy historii sztuki w epoce Ernsta H. Gombricha [How to Explain a Painting? Methodological Clues in Art History in the Epoch of Ernst H. Gombrich] (Poznań 2022).
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