By Mirror.co.uk 30/07/2009 These are the extraordinary pictures of the Statue of Liberty and icons of Englishman Arthur S. Mole took the pictures of soldiers returning to Now the unique collection of the remarkable pictures has been brought together for the first time at the Carl Hammer Gallery, in Mole's work was the first to use a unique technique to beat the problem of perspective after he devised a clever way of getting so many soldiers in the pictures. Taken in 1918, photographers Arthur S. Mole and his American colleague John D. Thomas took the photographs in camps across the A special 70-foot tower was built at each site especially for the shots. Arthur's great nephew Joseph Mole, 70, said the photographer was unique in the way he captured so many people on film. He said: "In the picture of the Statue of Liberty there are 12,000 men in the torch alone, but just 17 at the base. "The men at the top of the picture are actually half a mile away from the men at the bottom. "Arthur was able to get the image by actually drawing an outline on the lens, he then had the troops place flags in certain positions while he looked through the camera. "It worked so well because these men were used to following orders and the flags were a well known way of communicating. "When it came to the day of the photograph Arthur would then be able to put all the pieces together, he could say to 157 men 'move there and you can be Woodrow Wilson's ear'. "It would take a week to get all the outlines right, but just 30 minutes to move all the men into position to take the shot, it must have been amazing to watch." In total they took a total of 10 photos where thousands of soldiers were posed to form giant living symbols of the The photographs were taken as part of a Carl Hammer, from the He said: "I see modern photographers with all the technology we have these days trying to do the same as these two guys did almost 100 years ago, and I still think they did it best and they did it first. "It really is very clever how they managed to get so many soldiers in the shots, they realised using the same amount of soldiers for each row they would lose the image in the background. "If you look at the Statue of Liberty formation there are just a handful of men at the front, but the back row is made of thousands. "Mole and Thomas were commissioned by the "It must have been incredible for the soldiers to be part of these photos and to be part of this slice of history."Incredible pictures of 30,000 soldiers recreating Statue of Liberty and other icons of US history
Saturday, 1 August 2009
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