Green Day
I'd wanted to participate in a Spencer Tunick installation ever since I first heard about him and his naked photographic art about 25 years ago. There were five basic reasons for this: to be a part of a naked installation, to be included in one of his artworks, to experience a naked day out with a difference, to get together with other like-minded people, and for the sheer fun of it. And now, at last, I can finally say that I've done it!
Long gone are the days when Spencer had to canvass people in the streets to find someone, anyone, willing to appear in his photographs; of working hard to muster up even a handful of volunteers (sometimes not even that) to participate. The 2001 documentary about his travels around the USA doing this, Naked States, gives us an idea of some of the challenges facing him back then.
Nowadays, however, it is a completely different matter! Each time he announces an upcoming event, he receives thousands of applications from volunteers keen to participate, and has to make a selection (although for this event, everyone who applied was included on the list; numbers was the key)! I met people who had travelled from abroad to participate, and some Sprencer groupies who had already participated in several previous installations around the country or even around the world.
We were taken by chartered coaches to a huge olive grove outside Granada, where we were given a snack on arrival and listened to the briefings from Spencer and his team. They outlined the events of the day, what was expected of us and the dos and the don'ts. Once we'd got the formalities out of the way, it was time for the exciting part, and we proceeded to get green.
I buddied up with Nanni, a fellow Amiga from the Asociación de Amigos de la Playa Nudista de Cantarriján (AAPNC), in order to mutually ensure our total greenness and make sure that we were greened up in even the most out-of-reach places.
Once greened up, we made our way over to the grove of young olives where the first shot was to take place, and where the press (see links below) had gathered on raised platforms set up for the purpose. Temperatures were high, and Spencer had to work quickly – three people fainted during the first shot. We were then divided into two groups and further shots were taken in a second and a third olive-grove setting – lying down dotted with carnations, and standing and lying variations on a dusty hillside.
What is apparent in Tunick's art throughout the length of his career is the depersonalization of people, relieving them of their individuality and converting them into a river, or mass, of humanity—perhaps not even humanity, but rather something dehumanised but reminiscent of humans. There is no room for individuals in Tunick's art, and anyone in the frame who stuck out because of their height, sweatiness, size, or who, to the artist's eye, would cause a distraction, was sent to the back.
His team of assistants ran around like blue-arsed flies, obediently following the artist's ambiguous orders of, "Tell that man to look the other way!", and, "To the right; not the left!". In fact, the moments immediately prior to the taking of the photographs was the only chaos during an otherwise perfectly organised event.
Tunick was given licence to shout because, well, he's the artist, and he was the man of the moment; and trying to achieve the desired result with 800 people* as quickly as possible was quite a challenge. The second and third set ups went off in a similar fashion, but Spencer was noticeably more relaxed by the end of the final shot.
When it was all over, it seemed a shame not to take advantage of my startling greenness for some shots of my own, which I managed to take in a dusty almond-tree field on my way back home—no Spencer-Tunick image by any means, but maybe a bit more human.
* Attendance figures vary; the figure of 2000 participants was originally quoted, but this was soon revised down to 1200, and then to 1000. It seems the final figure was "almost 800", but even this seemed like a pretty big crowd at the time.
Press coverage (in English):
Press coverage (in Spanish);
Thanks for sharing such a lovely experience. I've read the press coverage. Great work. Nature's art work
ReplyDelete