that he applied to more benign figures and events. For another cover of
Evergreen Review,he celebrated presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy
in much the same iconic way as he had rendered Che. But for the most
part, in the United States, heroic imagery is often dubiously employed in
the service of commerce rather than politics. Some illustrators have created
personal styles on heroic conceits of Nazi and Socialist realism applied to
the idolatry of movie, music, and athletic stars. Sometimes this is ironic, but
not always. How many times has the classic “Atlas balancing the world”
image been used to represent everything from soft drinks to continuing
education programs (among others)? Heroic depiction is simply too
effective to relegate entirely to parody and satire—especially since audiences
have been perpetually susceptible to its allure.
Artists and designers filter heroism through their subjective lenses,
but the photographer captures it through an objective one. While this does
not imply the absence of prejudice or of predisposition for heroic
stereotypes, it means that photographers on the field generally record real
heroism in all its nuances. War photographer Don McCullin’s pictures from
Vietnam, for example, vividly revealed the essence of men under fire—the
meeting of bravery and fear. And in the photographs shot by Magnum
photographers in the aftermath of the 9 / 11 terrorist attacks on the World
Trade Center (New York September 11,Magnum Photos/Powerhouse
Books), Steve McCurry records a lonely hero, a New York City fireman,
stalwartly climbing a ladder over the devastation of Ground Zero. This and
other such photographic images are real life.
However cynical one may be about the manipulating power of
heroic imagery, after the attacks on Washington and New York, it is clear
that the new heroes—the rescuers—needn’t be designed or improved upon.
The set pieces of this current wave of heroic imagery have not been re-
posed or composed with artificial lights. The photographs of Ground Zero
are candid and true. Sure, out of this new hero-imagery old clichés will
doubtless emerge, but for now the real images will also prevail. Over a
hundred years ago, Elbert Hubbard, the founder of the Roycroft Arts &
Crafts Community, wrote, “The heroic man does not pose; he leaves that
for the man who wishes to be thought heroic.”