The anonymous famous

One story guaranteed to prick my interest is when someone comes forward claiming to be the hitherto-anonymous subject of some famous, iconic image of modern history. One such image was Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in the middle of wild V-J celebrations in Times Square. When Life magazine set out to track down that sailor and nurse decades later, they found no shortage of applicants.

Again, on the osculatory theme, Robert Doisneau's 1950 shot of two young lovers kissing on a crowded Paris footpath drew several claims for compensation from couples claiming to be those lovers, when the image became a best-selling poster.

In the less labially-fixated culture of Australia, our iconic image of post-war rejoicing is a wonderful piece of movie footage of a man dancing ecstatically, but decorously, down the middle of a city street. Many have come forward, claiming to be that Dancing Man.

So when I read that someone had come forward claiming to be the hooded prisoner in the most famous of the Abu Ghraib photographs, a little bell tinkled in the distance. Ali Shalal Qaissi apparently even uses the photo on his business card, and no, I don't know what his business is. The New York Times broke this story, and other papers followed suit, but Salon.com has come up with evidence that Qaissi is not the man in the photo (hat tip: LGF).