Photographer Spencer Tunick takes pictures of naked people in public - sometimes a LOT of naked people. He was featured in an HBO special a few weeks ago. His last project was to shoot images of naked people in all fifty states. His next project is to shoot naked people in different countries, and this is the Canadian shot.

His work is just great. HBO featured it because they enjoy making shows about naked people, but also, being a for-pay cable outlet, they're one of the only outlets that could have done a documentary on Mr. Tunick.

The fascination is not titillation; it's partly the shock of seeing naked people in public (an NYC image was show on a major Manhattan street). In one of the HBO shots, he had 5000 Phish fans on an army base, directing them by megaphone and creating a beautiful "wavy seascape" of human bodies. In another, he has a rather largish woman posIe on a bad of rocks overlooking the NYC skyline. This created a collision, both of the smooth and rough textures, but also the natural and the man-made.

He also has enormous trouble getting some of the work done, as you can imagine, which is great documentary fodder. But that's also part of the art; as you look at the images, you can only imagine the immense trouble needed to get some of them.

He does have a web site at spencertunick.com , but there isn't much there. Some of the images from the fifty-state project are at
http://www.nerve.com/photography/tunick/nakedStates/

-- highly recommended. If you go, the navigation for these images is (stupidly) hidden in the images; roll your mouse over them and you'll find it.

Note that the above image is not his; I think it's one of the wire service shots of the event needed to create the final image.

Naked New York

I saw a couple books at Tower Records called "Naked New York" and "Naked LA". Every other page had a black & white photo of someone fully clothed, and a naked picture of the same person on the facing page. Underneath there was a caption with their occupation. It ranged from "Investor" to "Junkie" to "Unemployed pregnant woman" to "School Bus Driver". Quite an interesting project, actually. Perhaps the same guy did both these?

It's possible, but I've tried to find as much as possible about him and so far I've found very little.

Naked LA

Naked NY and Naked LA were photographed by Greg Friedler.