The original photo, titled "The Kiss," shows a soldier kissing a nurse in Times Square at the end of WWII. Photo courtesy of Alfred Eisenstaedt.
"Unconditional Surrender" by sculptor J. Seward Johnson. Photo courtesy of Sarasota Season of Sculpture.
At the end of WWII, photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped a now famous photo of a sailor kissing a young nurse in New York’s Times Square. In 2005, when artist J. Seward Johnson was invited to participate in the annual exhibition of large scale sculptures displayed along the Bayfront in Sarasota, Florida, he decided to recreate the photo in a 26-foot high Styrofoam sculpture. The piece, named “Unconditional Surrender” by Seward, was so popular that local residents attempted to keep it in Sarasota permanently, but they were unable to find enough donors to pay for the sculpture. Recently, a new aluminum version returned to Sarasota, where it is scheduled to remain until March 2009. However this time Sarasota Season of Sculpture, the non-profit group that sponsors the event, is determined to keep the sculpture in Sarasota.
To do so, the organization will need to raise $675,000. The hundreds of people who stop every day to see the sculpture and have their photo taken in front of it may have given SSoS the germ of an idea; they are inviting couples to renew their wedding vows at 10 a.m. on Valentine’s Day 2009. Billed as “A Monumental Valentine’s Kiss,” every participating couple will receive a certificate of remarriage and be photographed sharing their own kiss under the sculpture. The $100 tax deductible cost per couple will be used toward the purchase of the monument.
Couples who wish to participate in the event can call Sarasota Season of Sculpture offices at 941-366-7767 or sign up online at the Sarasota Season of Sculpture events page. The sculpture is located at U.S. Highway 41 (Tamiami Trail) and the Ringling Causeway, at the beginning of Sarasota’s Bayshore Park, which offers walking paths, restaurants, boating, fishing and is adjacent to Sarasota’s historic downtown. A number of hotels are located in and around the downtown area, as are numerous entertainment options, including cinemas, theaters, the Sarasota Opera, the Sarasota Symphony, G.Wiz Science Center, the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center, and the John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art.
Article by Barbara Weibel of Hole In The Donut Travels
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6 Responses
It is an amazing photo… I had not realized they have designed sculptures from it, though! Do you know if they ever determined the identity of the soldier and nurse in the photo??
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According to Wikipedia, in its August 1980 issue, the editors of LIFE Magazine (where the photo originally appeared) asked that the kissing sailor come forward. In the October 1980 issue, the editors reported that eleven men and three women had come forward to claim to be the kissers. Edith Shain, is generally accepted as the woman in the photo but controversy still swirls around the question of which of the eleven men was actually the sailor.
The field of potential men has since been narrowed to three individuals, George Mendonca, Carl S. Muscarello, and Glen McDuffie. Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson has done a forensic analysis on all three men, measuring their ears, facial bones, hairline, wrist, knuckles and hand and comparing those to enlargements of Eisenstaedt’s picture. In Gibson’s opinion, McDuffie was the man in the photo. McDuffie also says he has passed five polygraph tests confirming his claim.
However there is also strong evidence that Mendoca was the sailor. In August of 2005, a team of volunteers from the Naval War College were able to match Mendoca’s scars and tattoos to scars and tattoos in the picture, leading them to announce that Mendoca was, in their opinion, the man in the photo. In 1987, Mendonca filed a lawsuit against Time Inc. alleging that he was the sailor in the photograph but he ultimately dismissed the suit when he had to prove that he was, in fact, the sailor in the photograph.
Of course, we will probably never know for certain who the sailor and the nurse were. It may well be that all eleven men kissed some nurse in Times Square on the day it was announced the war was over.
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I just recently got to visit this statue in person It is amazing .. when I got home and actually researched it I was totally impressed!
The sculpture is still there as of today (7/5/2011)
I was in Sarasota over Halloween 2011, and it’s still a site to behold…especially if you are aware of it’s history.
Awesome. We went to Thunder by the Bay event in Sarasota and tried to get a picture while driving by. Now we know the history it is another good reason to come back.