INTERVIEW: SPENCER TUNICK THE NUDIE "ARTIST"

Extremely low turnout? (Also notice the slashed wrist scars)

Spencer Tunick, despite his garment-implying name, is a New York artist who specializes in photographing nudes in public spaces.

“I’m just a catalyst for something they would probably do with someone else,” he told TJ when we caught up with him in Kyoto. “The thing I do well is that I do it consistently and with a certain style.”

Since embarking on his mission to photograph people naked in public places, the 34 year-old Tunick has snapped several thousand people butt-naked in hundreds of different locations, including in front of the United Nations General Assembly Building. In his Naked States series, he mobilized every available volunteer nudist, sometimes using hundreds of naked people at a time to create striking and surreal landscapes and cityscapes.

But his photography is not just about nudity.

“My work has a lot to do with the anonymity of public space and the vulnerability of human nakedness. Sometimes a nude in front of a background often creates a stronger recognition for the background than one would normally have.”

Tunick has now taken the concept of Naked States to the next level, the international one, with his new project, Nude Adrift. He is currently touring the World, taking advantage of whatever photographic opportunities present themselves, while at the same time playing a proselytizing role, persuading people to cast off their inhibitions with their clothes.

“I’m trying to do every continent, visiting about 25 to 30 countries.”

Emphasising the truly global aspect of this work, his next stop after Japan is Antarctica. 

"Hopefully I’m going to be able to persuade one person on the ship going over to pose naked with my girlfriend."

As a man who has tangled with New York’s redoubtable Mayor Giuliani over First Amendment rights, TJ asks him if he has any plans to try his brand of freedom of expression in the country that must be considered the nadir of nudity, Afghanistan.

“I always think that it’s a small price to pay to spend two days in jail for doing what you believe in, but if it was 2 years that might be different. As my work is about public space, it would endanger the people posing for me. Anyway Afghanistan is difficult enough for photo-journalists.”

Here in Japan he hopes to win enough converts to hold mass nudist photo shoots with 300 to 400 people in such venues as Shibuya when he returns later. It remains to see how the authorities will respond to having their feathers ruffled in this way, but Tunick insists he tries to avoid causing unnecessary confusion and offence.

Passing through Tokyo a few days before TJ spoke to him, he did a photo shoot with a handful of nudists in Tokyo’s busy Ikebukuro area.

“I did it at just after sunrise, between 6 and 7 a.m., when there are not so many people on the streets. I’m not doing it to get in the way of people. I’m doing it as discretely as possible.”

Although the authorities habitually regard any kind of nudity in sexual terms and as a threat to public morals, for Tunick, the essence of his work is desexualization

“There is too much pornography in the photographic medium. As an art object the body has an awful lot of austerity. I think people want to empower the body as a non-sexual object. I think that’s why they pose for me, to regain the strength of the body that has been lost, and to take away the shame of being nude. There is a special relief that comes when you can actually get naked without the sexual pressures.”

You can volunteer to participate in forthcoming Spencer Tunick photo shoots or just follow his progress around the World in his regularly updated photo journal by clicking onto [defunct web page]

Colin Liddell
Tokyo Journal
January 2002