Okay, so I picked that picture as my paper topic- or rather, that’s one of the incarnations of the photo. The other is nearly identical (except for being in color), was taken by Neil Leifer of Sports Illustrated, and gets way more attention than poor John Rooney’s ever did, despite the fact that Rooney’s was the one that all the newspapers ran in the first place (in fact, according to the Internet, John Rooney might as well not exist. I spent all weekend trying to find something, anything, about the man besides the fact that he was an AP photographer. It’s the only time Google has ever failed me).
John Rooney/AP
Anyway, the Leifer image was used in 2004 as part of the Adidas “Impossible is Nothing” campaign (interestingly, they converted it to black and white, so it look even MORE like Rooney’s photo), which a) helps boost the whole ‘icon’ argument (woo!) and b) lets me segue into a shameless plug for one of the greatest commercials ever.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFabpG4Y-Uo]
Which is the entire point of this post, really. I just wanted an excuse to link to the video, because I love it so much.