Boxer's image in knock-out mosaic

A Black Country boxer has been immortalised as the image of the world's largest photo mosaic.

An historic portrait of amateur fighter Arthur James Bunce, from Tipton, was chosen as the winning picture for the world record attempt, which saw a giant version of his image recreated with more than 112,000 photographs.

The huge 30m by 30m mosaic successfully broke a world record as the largest project of its kind and was unveiled outside Thinktank at Millennium Point in Birmingham.

It was created as part of The Big Picture, an arts project which saw thousands of people send in photos from across the region.

The winning image was chosen from the thousands of entries and was sent in by the boxer's 18-year-old granddaughter Lucy Moore, also from Tipton.

Originally taken in 1926, it is a portrait of Arthur Bunce taking part in boxing training as a 17-year-old.

Born in Dudley Port, he spent his working life at Patent Shaft steelworks in Wednesbury.

He had 14 children and died in 1987 at the age of 78, but the photo has continued to be an inspiration to all of his family.

Former Alexandra High School and Sandwell College student Lucy, a mobile beauty therapist, said she was totally overwhelmed by the final mosaic.

"It still hasn't hit me really, everyone is just so excited about it.

"This photo is so important to my family,"she said.

"I never got to meet my granddad but he and my nan were always at the heart of our family.

"My brother, Michael, even has the photo tattooed across his back. My family have always been very proud of our Black Country roots, my grandfather especially, so this is a great tribute to him."

She said the family knew very little about his boxing career as he was very modest and did not talk about it very much. "We don't really know much about it. We know he was in the army so we think it must have been there that he took it up.

"He was a teenager in the 1920s so it's likely that he fought in the war but he never talked about that so I don't even know if he was sent anywhere or where he served." She said Arthur was a big family man and was still very important to all the relatives, even those who had never met him.

"When I sent in the picture I didn't even realise it was a competition, I just knew they needed all these pictures so thought I'd help out and so I emailed it over.

"That is the only picture we've got of him when he was a young man so it is really important to us. "I had all the old photographs of our family scanned into the computer as I didn't want to lose any of them.

"That photograph is in all the grandchildren's houses and all the family has a copy.

"It is an iconic image for all of us and it is like our family's own piece of artwork."

Big Picture project manager, Kerry Endsor, said the final mosaic was a fascinating insight into the lives and loves of the people of the West Midlands. "The aim of The Big Picture was to encourage as many different people to get involved."

"We know from the thousands of photographs we received that sport plays a huge part in the lives of people living in this region, so I think its particularly fitting that the selection of the final image has enabled us to celebrate our sporting heritage with this amazing transformation," she added.