Where Are the Iconic COVID-19 Images?
A tennis ball covered in spikes. That’s all we’ve got. More than a year has passed since the first reports of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus, and its most memorable visual signifier is a stylized illustration of the virus itself. That spiky ball floats in the background of explanatory graphics and charts, or looms eerily behind the heads of television anchors delivering yet more somber news. When I think of COVID-19, that’s what I see.
The lack of an iconic photograph from the coronavirus crisis has been nagging at me for months. When I think of 9/11, I see the smoking towers, or the “falling man.” When I think of the 2015 Mediterranean refugee crisis, I see the tiny body of Alan Kurdi, a boy whose family searched for safety across the water and found tragedy instead. Where the visual references come up short, so do my memories—the 2005 Islamist bombings of London have faded in my mind, because all but one of them happened underground. A terrorist
