A Really Big Kiss

J. Seward Johnson has created a 25-foot statue depicting Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous image (left) of a sailor and nurse celebrating V-J Day in Times Square for the city of Sarasota, Fla., as part of its "Season of Sculpture" program. Slate has posted a series of images here.

The timing on this is kinda interesting in that I recently had a long discussion with a friend about ostensibly candid news photographs that were staged. This is something that I know a thing or two about because of my association with many news photographers over the years. The good ones never staged anything.

Exhibit A in the annals of famous staged photographs has to be Joe Rosenthal's iconic image of six Marines raising the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi after the U.S. captured the Japanese island of Okinawa in February 1945. (A different group of Marines had raised the flag earlier. Their commanding officer saw the enormous PR value in the image, fetched Rosenthal from the beach and asked a new group of Marines to reenact the scene for him. The rest, as they say, was history.)

Anyhow, I've never heard or read anything to indicate that Eisenstaedt's Times Square image was anything but candid. Which makes it even more wonderful.