This will probably be the only book published about Arthur Mole and his extraordinary living statues. The book is as quirky as his pictures. Originally published in France in 2015 as a large size paperback (this edition is in English). It has a piece of dark blue see-through plastic as the cover and under that an enlargement taken from one of Mole's photos, this is followed by fifteen pages of other photo enlargements and the format is repeat on the last fifteen pages (and some of these blow-ups are truly huge).
Mole's twenty-seven photos are printed on a matt art paper (with a 175 screen) and do a reasonable job in capturing the detail. The 'Human US shield' (1918) has thirty thousand military folk trailing off into the distance and it's possible to clearly make out individuals in the first few rows. The head of Woodrow Wilson (1918) took twenty-one thousand and the Statue of Liberty (1917) eighteen thousand. The book's large size helps, the YMCA logo (1917) is fifteen and a half inches wide over a spread. I thought the most remarkable thing about all his photos is that the bird's-eye view is always in perspective.
Besides the amazing military and patriotic symbols there are a few others of a religious nature that don't seem to work as well or are as creative. Thousands and thousands of the military would do as ordered no matter how many hours it too. After the photos there is a twelve page essay by Louis Kaplan that does a rather bland job of deconstructing Mole and his work.
The book captures a unique and incredibly obscure slice of photographic history.
No comments:
Post a Comment