Making Obama iconic: iconic potential and the affordances of images

“Iconic” images possess cultural power. This paper asks: What makes an image “iconic”? To become publicly recognized as “iconic,” images undergo a process of consecration. We argue that this process of consecration is facilitated by the capacity to perceive the degree to which an image “looks iconic.” From this perspective, iconicity is an affordance that emerges from the relation between an image’s visual qualities and the cognitive associations of a perceiving subject. The paper presents a novel method for measuring subjective perceptions of iconicity using pairwise image comparison tasks. The analysis finds that people systematically evaluate some images as more iconic than others, suggesting that images vary in their “iconic potential.” The paper assesses whether image qualities are associated with an image’s iconic potential and whether iconic potential varies across groups. There is minimal variation in people’s evaluations of iconicity, suggesting a high degree of stability. These results indicate that the process by which images become publicly recognized as “iconic” is not entirely arbitrary. Some images are perceived by individuals as more iconic than others, which may influence which images get promoted and circulated.