A Huge Flag and a Giant Camera for Veterans Day 2011

Photo by Asawin Suebsaeng

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It’s Veterans Day, and that means gargantuan American flags, a huge Instamatic camera, and—of course—dancing gophers.

The LA-based Metabolic Studio traveled across the country on their “Flag Tour” to raise their giant Old Glory in front of the US Capitol. The studio photographed the event with their “Liminal Camera,” which their optics division spent three months constructing (they claim that it is the “world’s largest Instamatic camera”).

The tour is the latest in the studio’s “artistic and fun…campaign to raise awareness” for veterans’ issues, says artist and event organizer Lauren Bon.

Here’s footage of the flag being hoisted atop a crane on 11-11-11:

Here’s a video of some of the gopher boogie during the event (the gopher was used as a metaphor for how much of the veterans activism in the country has “gone underground”):

And here’s a pic from inside the truck-mounted Liminal Camera, featuring the upside-down image of the Capitol building before a photo was taken:

Photographs taken at Friday’s flag raising and other tour stops will be showcased at the Hirshhorn Museum over the weekend. War veterans will be present to take questions and tell their stories.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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