THE IMAGE-MONUMENT
The sculptural transposition of war photographs in the United-States since 1945

Abstract

This dissertation studies a novel corpus made of American memorials based on the remediation of one or more war photograph(s). While the connections between sculpture and photography have been studied extensively since the early days of photography, most works on the subject have focused on the uses of photography to serve and enhance sculpture, on the photogenic quality of sculpture, and on the hybridization of both media in contemporary art since the 1960’s. This dissertation offers a new perspective on the relationship between photography and sculpture through the in-depth analysis of an American phenomenon that shows that photography can be “sculpture-genic” as well. This work is grounded both in studies of photojournalism and illustrated news, and in memory studies. It engages with the ongoing research on the processes of cultural valorization of news photographs in the United-States. The goal of this study is to better understand how and why photographs purposed to document the news and be published in newspapers and magazines become tools of commemoration. The memorials examined in this dissertation, which I call “documentary monuments,” rely on a dichotomy between their didactic aim, which is based on visual documents, and on the other hand, the symbolic and cultural valorization of the herein remediated photographs. This leads to the mutation of the photograph from an image-document to an image-monument. My dissertation studies the effects this mutation has on the memorialization of the events that are commemorated that way. I argue that the monumentalization of news photographs cannot be reduced to an ultimate stage of the iconization process of images led by the media industry itself. It must also be seen as the product of the convergence of the American cultures of war and images. These memorials depend both on the self-promotion of the media corporation and the self-representation of the military corps.

Keywords

“documentary monument,” remediation, photography, sculpture, document, monument, photojournalism, war photography, commemoration, media, memory, World War II, Korean War, 9/11, Iraq War, Marines