July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: the Second Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, the founding document of our nation. Although the document itself would be signed later in August, July 4th 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding from when the original 13 colonies regarded themselves as independent states no longer subjected to the British crown.

This is a historical LEGO vignette I built throughout June and released on July 4th during my weekend trip to New England. In this vignette I made magnifigures of Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson reviewing a draft of the Declaration of Independence; this scene is inspired by a famous painting from American painter Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

The challenges for this project consisted of getting the right pieces for the bodies of each figure, and then I ran into a challenge of photographing the scene. I took dozens of shots with multiple camera lenses to get the photo right. The walls of the vignette are just simple tan bricks, slapped together quickly the day before the shoot.