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Imagine, for a moment, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photograph “VJ Day in Times Square.” Two figures—a sailor and a nurse—kiss against the background of Times Square in New York City. The background is teeming with people. The avenues of the city, with their recognizable billboards and marquees and telltale North-American architecture, converge into the horizon, transforming that famous intersection into a ground against which the kissing figures stand out.“The kiss”(as this photograph is sometimes also known) means something more than other kisses because it has been set against that particular background, where sailors and civilians, many of them smiling broadly, intermingle after a long time of war.

There are of course many photographs of lovers kissing, but this one has achieved the status of an “iconic image.” 2 Why? It has become iconic because it manages to convey a message about a particular feeling and sentiment made possible by the social experience of a place called New York City in a particular time and place. One reason it can do this is because we know it was taken on VJ Day in the heart of a city which is located in a nation that has just declared victory over Japan, a country with which it has been at war. The photograph also means something because viewers know that the city in the photograph is a place populated by people not all that different from those in the photograph—all with different roles to play and with different social meanings attached to who they are and what they do. The sailor. The nurse. These are not just individuals, but symbols of something larger than life. They have become figures. They have …