Diplopie. L’image photographique à l’ère des médias globalisés.

September 11 was one of the most photographed events in the world, so why is it that no more that a handful of images, or rather motifs, remain that are repeated ad infinitum? The photography historian Clement Cheroux examines this paradox in his book “Diplopie – L’image photographique a l’ere des medias globalises : essai sur le 11 septembre 2001”, which is reviewed by Gerome Truc. He explains that people wanted an historical point of comparison and found it in an iconographic image which linked September 11 with its “historical doppelganger”, Pearl Habor. “The images of September 11 repeat themselves but they also repeat something else. This feeling of deja-vu is key to the success of the photograph ‘Ground Zero Spirit’ by Thomas Franklin, which shows three firemen raising the American flag on the smoking rubble of Ground Zero. It is an unmistakable echo of one of the most famous icons of American history: ‘Flags of our Fathers’ by Joe Rosenthal, in which six marines raise the same flag on top of mound Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima, at the beginning of the war which prompted the attack on Port Harbor.”