Mole & Thomas (photographers)
Living Emblem of the United States Marines
Mole & Thomas, 915 Medinah Building, Chicago, Illinois: January 24, 1919
Black and white photograph
13.5 x 10.5 inches
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of other Mole & Thomas photographs.
Living Emblem of the United States Marines
Moles & Thomas, 1919
Moles & Thomas, 1919
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Complete Title: Living Emblem of the United States Marines. 100 Officers & 9000 Enlisted Men. Marine Barracks, Paris Island, S.C. Brigadier General J.H. Pendleton, Commanding
Aerial photograph of over 9,000 Marines based at Paris Island, South Carolina forming the emblem of the U.S. Marines -- a map of the Americas within an anchor surmounted by a bald eagle. This photograph was taken by Mole & Thomas, a Chicago firm famous for such patriotic bird's-eye group shots at military bases after World War I.
Arthur S. Mole was a British-born commercial photographer who worked in Zion, Illinois. During and shortly after World War I, Mole traveled with his partner John D. Thomas from one military camp to another, posing thousands of soldiers to form gigantic patriotic symbols that they photographed from above. The formations depicted such images as the Liberty Bell, the Statue of Liberty, the Marine Corps emblem and a portrait of President Woodrow Wilson. The Wilson portrait, for example, was formed using 21,000 officers and men at Camp Sherman in Ohio and stretched over 700 feet. His "Human Liberty Bell" was composed from over 25,000 soldiers, arranged with Mole's characteristic attention to detail to even depict the crack in the bell. Mole and Thomas spent a week or more preparing for these immense works, which were taken from a 70- or 80-foot tower with an 11- by- 14-inch view camera. When the demand for these photographs dropped in the 1920s, Mole returned to his photography business in Zion. Photographs by Mole and Thomas are in the collections of the Chicago Historical Society, the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress.
References:
Jensen, Oliver. America's Yesterdays -- Images of Our Lost Past Discovered in the Photographic Archives of The Library of Congress. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1978, pp. 248-49.
"Arthur S. Mole." The Heartland Project: Illusions of Eden. http://www.illusionsofeden.org/photographer/mole.html (18 March 2003).
Collins, Dan. "Anamorphosis and the Eccentric Observer (Parts 1 and 2)." Leonardo Vol. 25, No. 1 and 2, 1992. Arizona State University. http://www.asu.edu/cfa/art/people/faculty/collins/Anamorph.html (18 March 2003).