--- title: LIFE Photographer Lisa Larsen's Curiously Intimate Pictures of Crowds description: Photographer Lisa Larsen made pictures of crowds that managed to capture the energy of multitudes (and smaller gatherings) while ensuring that individuals weren't lost in the mix. canonical: https://time.com/3876852/life-photographer-lisa-larsens-curiously-intimate-pictures-of-crowds/ author: Liz Ronk article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-05-02T02:41:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:03:52.822Z og:title: LIFE Photographer Lisa Larsen's Curiously Intimate Pictures of Crowds og:description: Photographer Lisa Larsen made pictures of crowds that managed to capture the energy of multitudes (and smaller gatherings) while ensuring that individuals weren't lost in the mix. og:url: https://time.com/3876852/life-photographer-lisa-larsens-curiously-intimate-pictures-of-crowds/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6cb4ca092807c9d2/698849eee20a871adea8aae4/03_00960104.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Russia, 1956 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: LIFE Photographer Lisa Larsen's Curiously Intimate Pictures of Crowds twitter:description: Photographer Lisa Larsen made pictures of crowds that managed to capture the energy of multitudes (and smaller gatherings) while ensuring that individuals weren't lost in the mix. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6cb4ca092807c9d2/698849eee20a871adea8aae4/03_00960104.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Lisa Larsen's Curiously Intimate Crowd Photos by [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk May 2, 2013 2:41 AM UTC  Crowd at Lenin Stadium during a sports festival, with some holding flowers for the winning athletes, 1956. Crowd at Lenin Stadium during a sports festival, with some holding flowers for the winning athletes, 1956.Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) ## Liz Ronk May 2, 2013 2:41 AM UTC Lately, crowds are everywhere. Or rather, crowdsourcing is everywhere — a notion and a process that’s increasingly heralded as a way to address societal ills and cultural threats ranging from traffic jams to terrorism. James Surowiecki’s 2005 bestseller, _The Wisdom of Crowds_, brought the discussion of crowds and their behavior into the mainstream in an utterly new and (for the uninitiated) approachable way, while “democratic journalism” sites like Reddit and Newsvine employ crowds, i.e., site users, to cull and distribute what the crowd deems relevant information to millions of people around the Web and around the world, instantaneously. Despite the star power now enjoyed by the many, though, the idea of what a crowd _looks_ like remains both fluid, and contradictory. Is a crowd a mob? An audience? A rally? A “sample population”? All of those things? None of those things? And more critically, when does a crowd cease to be a collection of individuals, and morph into something more (or something less)? Photographer Lisa Larsen cut gently and firmly through all of those questions by somehow finding a way to make pictures of crowds that both captured the energy of multitudes (and smaller gatherings) while making sure that individual faces weren’t lost in the mix. This gallery features some of her very best crowd photos. Larsen herself was a remarkable individual — a German-born prodigy, of sorts, she moved to the States with her family in the 1930s, graduated from college when she was just 17, and went on to photograph for publications as diverse as _Glamour_, the New York Times _Magazine_, _Vogue_ and, of course, LIFE. When she died in 1959 at the age of 34, of breast cancer, LIFE eulogized Larsen this way: --- > “” --- --- > “” ---  A large crowd gathers to welcome Yugoslav leader Tito during his visit to Russia, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A crowd in Russia, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Crowd at Lenin Stadium during a sports festival, with some holding flowers for the winning athletes, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A crowd of people watch track events in Russia, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Russian boys line up to see visiting French Prime Minister Guy Mollet, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Russian woman eyes a rhinestone bracelet at a display of British fashions, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Women shoppers at the biggest state department store in Warsaw, Poland, looking at bras from East Germany, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Audience, Mongolia, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Fans of Fred Allen on street during memorial service for the humorist and entertainer, New York, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Crowd, Indonesia, 1956. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  New American citizens take oath during a mass naturalization ceremony, New York, 1954. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Crowd of people gathers for politician Vito Marcantonio's funeral, New York, 1954. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Frenzied shoppers crowd around a busy cashier during a department store sale, New York, 1954. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Parents cheer during a school bean bag race, 1953. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A crowd of people in lower Manhattan looking up at a hornbill bird on a Wall Street building, New York, 1953. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Writer Nathaniel Benchley (right) confers with producers and a designer about the stage set for his comedy, The Frogs of Spring. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A crowd in Normandy, France, 1952, on the 8th anniversary of the 1944 D-Day landings. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Shocked neighbors line the street waiting for Arnold Schuster's casket to be carried from funeral home, New York, 1952\. Schuster, an amateur detective, was instrumental in the capture of bank robber Willie Sutton, and was murdered by members of the Gambino crime family. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  A crowd gathers outside a New York City beauty salon, 1950, as inside the famous Dione Quintuplets get their hair done. Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3876852/life-photographer-lisa-larsens-curiously-intimate-pictures-of-crowds/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3876852/life-photographer-lisa-larsens-curiously-intimate-pictures-of-crowds/"},"headline":"Lisa Larsen's Curiously Intimate Crowd Photos","datePublished":"2013-05-02T02:41:40.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:03:52.822Z","description":"Photographer Lisa Larsen made pictures of crowds that managed to capture the energy of multitudes (and smaller gatherings) while ensuring that individuals weren't lost in the mix.","url":"https://time.com/3876852/life-photographer-lisa-larsens-curiously-intimate-pictures-of-crowds/","keywords":["Culture","russia","New York City","Poland","black and white photography","1950s"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6cb4ca092807c9d2/698849eee20a871adea8aae4/03_00960104.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Liz Ronk","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6cb4ca092807c9d2/698849eee20a871adea8aae4/03_00960104.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Russia, 1956","caption":"Crowd at Lenin Stadium during a sports festival, with some holding flowers for the winning athletes, 1956.","creditText":"Lisa Larsen—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/culture/","name":"Culture"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3876852/life-photographer-lisa-larsens-curiously-intimate-pictures-of-crowds/","name":"Lisa Larsen's Curiously Intimate Crowd Photos"}}]}] ```