Jimi Who?
From Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyperreality on the semiotics of iconic photography: "The vicissitudes of our century have been summed up in a few exemplary photographs that have proved epoch-making: the unruly crowd pouring into the square during the "ten days that shook the world"; Robert Capa's dying miliciano; the marines planting the flag on Iwo Jima; the Vietnamese prisoner being executed with a shot in the temple; Che Guevara's tortured body on a plank in a barracks." [More...] The semiotic power of photographs tends to fade after two generations. In the film about paparazzi photographer Ron Galella in “Smash His Camera”, there was a young girl at the show who didn’t know the identity of many of the iconic people in the photographs, such as Henry Kissinger, a semiotic figure of the Nixon era. It is probably now common for some younger people to see a photo of Jimi Hendrix and not know who he is, beyond the caricature. We still need de...
