The Seven Noses of Soho

Look up at Admiralty Arch as you pass through it toward The Mall. On the inside wall, about seven feet up on the left, there's a human nose. Just sticking out of the stone. No face. No plaque. Just a nose.

In nineteen ninety-seven, an artist named Rick Buckley went out at night and glued thirty-five plaster casts of his own nose to buildings across central London. It was a guerrilla art protest against the explosion of CCTV surveillance cameras — London was becoming one of the most watched cities on Earth, and Buckley thought that was worth commenting on. A nose for the nosy state.

He didn't tell anyone he'd done it. For fourteen years, the noses just... existed. People found them and had no idea what they were. Urban legends grew around them. The most persistent myth claimed there were exactly seven noses hidden in Soho, and that anyone who found all seven would become fabulously wealthy. Treasure-hunt maps circulated. People spent weekends searching.

Buckley finally came forward in two thousand and eleven to claim responsibility. By then, most of the original thirty-five had been knocked off, painted over, or lost to building renovations. Only about four survive in Soho itself — on Bateman Street, Dean Street, Endell Street, and Great Windmill Street. The Admiralty Arch nose is the most famous because it's the easiest to spot, though it's technically not in Soho.

What makes this brilliant is the irony. An anti-surveillance artwork became the subject of public surveillance — people hunting, photographing, cataloguing. The noses watch us watching for them. Buckley couldn't have designed a better feedback loop if he'd tried.