Photo: Heather McDougal's daughter
Taking a photo of someone "holding up" the Leaning Tower of Pisa is like a tourist's rite-of-passage. If the angle is right, then the silly pose makes sense. But if the angle is wrong ... the photo comes out even better!
Heather McDougal of Cabinet of Wonder has the story:
In Pisa my elder daughter became fascinated by all the people taking pictures of their friends holding up the leaning tower, or pushing it over - it is never easy to tell from the wrong angle. At times there were four or five people in a row all holding their hands up - which, when taken out of context, looked like some kind of mass-hallucination tai chi class.
She asked me for her camera and disappeared for a half hour, and then came back with these, which I think vie with many of the conceptual art pieces in the Whitney Museum. I found them hilarious and strangely compelling.
Link - via 11111001111
People do this everywhere with naked statues. In Rome, I saw a girl pretending to be cupping the scrotums (scrota?) of the two big dudes on steps of the Campidoglio. In Pompeii, I saw a lady giggling about rubbing Apollo's bum for a picture.
Tourists...
http://www.archive.org/details/AdultEducationMetatourism
http://tinyurl.com/5krg77
for a bunch of pisa-pushers!