Abstract

This article analyzes a photographic PR handout that was widely circulated in media the world all over in 2013, depicting the future heir to the British throne, Prince William, and his wife, Catherine, presenting their new-born baby to the world. This photograph is scrutinized in great detail employing Bohnsack's documentary method, a strain of reconstructive social research, alongside analytical methods that have their origin in art history. In particular, the article analyzes the iconicity of the seemingly 'private' snapshot, and reconstructs what constructs of dominion are at play in the picture and its inherent social contexts. This royal picture, the article argues, displays forms of the sacred. In turn, it also profanates what is sacred about it by reverting to modes of bourgeois self-representation that panders to the general public and tries to win it over, or back, to the idea of monarchic rule, however symbolic the latter may be. In the analyzed picture, power is manifested by way of a specific habitus of the iconic protagonists that glosses over and negates crises and rifts in British society.