People Pictures: The Art of the Conceptual Photograph, 1915–1920

Mole & Thomas... Living Emblem of the United States Marines (1919, Vintage Silver Gelatin Print). From the exhibition People Pictures: The Art of the Conceptual Photograph, 1915–1920 at Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago, IL. "...A Patriotic Mole, A Living Photograph, Louis Kaplan, of Southern Illinois University, writes, 'The so-called living photographs and living insignia of Arthur Mole [and John Thomas] are photo-literal attempts to recover the old image of national identity at the very moment when the United States entered the Great War in 1917. Mole's [and Thomas’s] photos assert, bolster, and recover the image of American national identity via photographic imaging. Moreover, these military formations serve as rallying points to support U.S. involvement in the war and to ward off any isolationist tendencies. In life during wartime, [their] patriotic images function as "nationalist propaganda" and instantiate photo cultural formations of citizenship for both the participants and the consumers of these group photographs.'"