Iconography of Sovereignty in Press Photography: Aby Warburg and Martin Warnke

This article traces the formation and development of the art historical method known as “political iconography” by focusing on the iconography of sovereignty in the medium of press photography. The method was first established by Aby Warburg in his Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg, institutionalized six decades later by the art historian Martin Warnke, and eventually popularized by his students Horst Bredekamp and Michael Diers. The article examines each stage of this method’s genealogy and its approach to the medium of press photography. It draws together Warburg’s fascination with the ancient roots of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s iconography, Warnke’s analysis of the German politician Franz Josef Strauss’s appearance next to a lion and his inquiry into Pope John Paul II’s gesture of kissing the earth, as well as Bredekamp’s and Diers’s examinations of a contemporary “history image” from the United States.