After reading this review, I have to read this book!  For my second bachelor’s degree, I majored in Popular Culture and a large part of that study was looking at icons, mostly 20th Century figures and understanding their contexts and impact to the society built around them.  In his new book, , Martin Kemp examines some of the most important images turned icons throughout history.  In his review of Kemp’s book, Ed Voves for the California Literary Review writes how Kemp hit the nail on the head for most of his analysis, even if he may have missed for a couple of subjects.

It is still shocking to see the photo of Kim Phuc, a nine-year old Vietnamese girl screaming in pain, her naked body seared by napalm in 1972. I am old enough to remember seeing the Associated Press photo when it first hit the front pages of newspapers. The Vietnam War had been shredding bodies and hopes for so long that it hardly seemed possible that a single image of human conflict could pierce through the war’s futility and touch our hearts.

 

And then photographer Nick Ut captured “The Girl in the Picture” on film. He aimed his Leica M-2 camera and with one quick “click,” Phan Thi Kim Phuc, became a symbol of the horror of the Vietnam War and by extension all wars.

 

“The Girl in the Picture” is one of eleven images which have achieved the status of icons. These instantly recognizable images are the subjects of Martin Kemp’s new book, Christ to Coke. Kemp, a leading authority on the work of Leonardo da Vinci, analyses the process by which certain statues, paintings, photos, commercial “brands” and scientific formulas grab onto our imaginations and won’t let go.

Read the rest of the review Book Review: Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon by Martin Kemp | California Literary Review.