The Berlin Wall from a visual perspective: comments on the construction of a political media icon

Abstract

The ‘pictorial turn’ is by now making itself felt strongly in research on political communication. This scientific trend should be linked to another key paradigmatic shift within cultural studies: to be precise, to research on phenomena of the culture of memory. The term ‘(media) icon’ could very well be useful in this context. It has already gained currency in transdisciplinary usage and is often combined with research on photographs, i.e. research on single famous images. In this article, a model of political media icons is developed that focuses on a more complex association of images. It uses the Berlin Wall as an example: this structure was a political tool of decisive importance in the so-called Cold War and has remained its key symbol to this day. The public iconization of the Berlin Wall combines architectural, cinematographic and photographic visual media with many others. Taken in its entirety, the Berlin Wall is capable of illustrating both the relevance and the many layers of pictorial phenomena in the context of political communication.