Man, I used to love Legos. They were right up there with Brio as one of my favorite toddler-year playtime events. It was like a primitive version of the Internet: you could do anything you could imagine. All sorts of completely sustainable block-shaped communities would spring up across my living room floor, only to be gracelessly leveled once boredom struck.
Having more pressing needs these days, I haven’t dabbled in Lego Land in quite some time. Which is probably a good thing, as recent Lego technology has been somewhat disappointing. Walk into any self-respecting toy store with a sizable Lego district, and all you see is rows and rows of kits for castles, helicopters, beach crafts, and moon rovers, etc. Everything is just too damn specific. The strength of Lego is that there’s no instruction manual needed. It doesn’t have to look like a Mongol fortress to be a Mongol fortress. But these days the blocks come so precise, you can’t fashion them into anything else. You buy a pirate ship kit, you make a pirate ship. That’s it. No ripping it apart and making an impromptu Maserati or a tropical igloo or a three-legged sloth with laser-shooting tail. Reenact some plundering, put the ship away, end of story. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see photographer Michael Stimpson’s work. He’s painstakingly recreated some of the most iconic photographs of all time with Legos. All without buying from the Photo Icons Collection®. Check out his Flickr page. There’s something pleasant about the Lego version of something real. The towns I built from scratch rarely had drama, as I recall.
Update 10/03/11: Check out Mike Stimpson's new site with more Lego recreations of classic photos
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