Berlin Olympics 1936 - sand sculpture

Germany had been awarded as host of the Olympics games 2 years before Hitler came to power so the show had to go on. The Nazi party were not too happy having certain ethnic groups attend of course but when threaten by boycott Hitler decided to let the ethnic groups from other countries attend but of course German Jews were barred. Hitler hoped that these games would be a shining example of Aryan supremacy and he would have gotten his way if it wasn't for that pesky Jesse Owens an African American.

And the winner is...

Owens won 4 Gold medals in running and the long jump beating his Germany rivals. Understandable Hitler wasn't too pleased and would not congratulate him. He just left the stadium Führerious. (Thank you...I'm here all week)
This was the subject of this second piece I worked on in Travenmunde, Germany for the 2004 Sand World Festival. This time I was joined by Niall Magee my Irish buddy and Kirke Kangro from Estonia.

We thought it nice to represent the snub as a crowd of spectators doing a sort of Mexican wave of turning their backs to Owens as he stood to receive his medals. The great dictator himself at the center looking away in a huff.

Turning heads

It was a simple enough piece to make and because our time was limited we didn't add too much detail. Niall made Jesse while Kirke and myself made the crowd. They were pretty ugly and simplified when you looked close but from a distance it looked like a crowd of individuals. We changed our places so as to mix our obvious different styles of face making. I can clearly see who did who but with the mix it wasn't a problem.
We probably only had three days to pull the whole thing together and although it wasn't the most beautiful representation I enjoyed making the different characters and it was good practice.

As another little bonus scene I went on to make a photo finish scene with Niall. He made the runners with Jesse Owens again breaking the tape. While I made a camera with actual real lens looking at the scene. I used a Fresnel car reversing screen. It should have been a TV camera as this was the first Olympics to be televised and broadcast Live. Strangely I went with a bellows camera. What was I thinking, I obviously didn't get the memo.

Luckily a rake covers a multitude of sins and I was off to my next project in Zeebrugge, Belgium.

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Ps

Thanks for reading. I use Steem to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, among other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Steem blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.

A hop, skip and jump - sand sculpture

![]https://steemitimages.com/256x512/https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7836/46601407592_6cec425bf8_c.jpg)

Earth worm (NSFW, may contain nuts) - sand sculpture

Welcoming Cyprus to the EU - sand sculpture

I hope you'll join me again soon.
@ammonite
[//]:# (!steemitworldmap 53.958457 lat 10.884995 long Berlin Olympics 1936 - sand sculpture 2004 d3scr)