Photography at the Leaning Tower of Pisa

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.

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July 17, 2008 at 2:43 am by Alex
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9 comments to "Photography at the Leaning Tower of Pisa"

Morgan
July 17th, 2008 at 6:53 am
When I was there 10 years ago they had a huge parameter set up around the tower, we couldn’t get nearly as close as some of these people. Lucky!
ted
July 17th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Was it a perimeter with huge parameters?

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…
Stefanie
July 17th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Hysterical - and a great reminder that even on vacation, you need to be careful what you do. There’s no telling who’s taking photographs without your consent…you could get back to work the next week and be the laughingstock of your whole office
Church
July 17th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Adult Education just put up a video about metatourism (taking pix of tourists,) which included a bit about these “Pisa Pushers”:

http://www.archive.org/details/AdultEducationMetatourism
Ali S.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
What a cool concept!
Dan B
July 17th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Anthony Bourdain did a hilarious little clip about this tourist habit in “No Reservations” when he visited Pisa:

http://tinyurl.com/5krg77
Lionheart
July 17th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
A classic!
your_mum_goes_to_college
July 17th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
When I was in Piza with my mum, she wanted me to take a photo of her holding the tower up, so I intentionally took it so that she was at completely the wrong angle and looked like a moron. It made a much better picture!
Fleepy
July 18th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Check out http://www.flickr.com/groups/pisapushers/pool/
for a bunch of pisa-pushers!

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