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Photo of the Day: Living Lady Liberty

200802libertylive.jpg

The above photo is a living replica of the Statue of Liberty, painstakingly recreated with 18,000 people at Camp Dodge in Des Moines, Iowa. The image is from 1918, and is one of many "living photographs" by Arthur Mole and John Thomas, who attempted to "recover the old image of national identity at the very moment when the United States entered the Great War in 1917."

Flash forward to present day, shed some clothes, subtract the nationalist propaganda angle, and you have Spencer Tunick. [via Moneyries. See enlarged image here.]

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By Jen Carlson in on February 18, 2008 3:50 PM

Comments [rss]

  • janelle

    my great grandfather was one of the men in the "human u.s. shield" photo. my grandmother has a print of it hanging in her home.

  • DJM

    Nationalist propaganda? Unbelievable, but maybe not...liberals

  • tsol

    "nationalist propaganda" ie "patriotism".

  • dbc

    There was a decent article on these "living photographs" in an issue of Martha Stewart Living a few months back.

  • eyekantspel

    Leave it to Jen Carlson to describe this 1918 image of the Statue of Liberty as "nationalist propaganda."

  • Kevin Walsh

    I was thinking Tunick but you beat me to it.



    www.forgotten-ny.com

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