Spencer Tunick
American Photographer
Middletown, New York
Summary of Spencer Tunick
There is great tension at play in the work of Spencer Tunick between freedom and compliance. The controversial photographer brings together large crowds of people, tells them to undress, and then directs them to pose in a particular way resulting in quite regimented scenes. Upon actually taking part however, participants report feelings of heightened exuberance and of overwhelming liberation. The viewer is confronted by a "sea of bodies", which on the one hand emits positive energy and suggests the power to incite change, whilst on the other, reveals vulnerability, insignificance, and even the possibility of catastrophic mass death. Paradoxically we ask, is this a pre- or post-apocalyptic writhing dystopia, or, is this utopia, a return to a pre-Christian age, before the Fall of Man and the necessity to hide or idealize the self?
In many ways, Tunick provides more questions than answers, but perhaps this is not the point. The artist is interested less in stark contrast and more in the place where boundaries combine. For example, as where the sea, the earth, and the sky meet, Tunick focuses in on lines drawn between the public and the private, the sexual and the platonic, and the collective and the individual; he seeks to blur these and ultimately ask if they are useful divisions at all.
Accomplishments
- Often revealing a lifeless flesh-colored mass, Tunick's images evoke associations with genocide and the most heinous crimes of history cannot be overlooked. Indeed, he made work in response to contemporary atrocities, and thus uses his art to directly protest against violence. Tunick focuses not only on the impact of war, but also uses his imagery to tackle inequality between the sexes, and to aid colossal environmental concerns.
- Tunick's photographs are also interesting when considered through a plainly aesthetic lens. Tunick has always been interested in architecture and very often bodies are laid out or stand in a configuration or shape that is designed to echo the geometry of the place in which they are in. His pictures become "peoplescapes", or "human still lives", and in this sense fit well into the lineage of art history. Tunick has compared his early New York work to Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings, whilst others have recalled Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1943).
- Tunick's practice highlights ongoing issues surrounding the nature of Performance Art and how best to document the fleeting energy of a happening in any successful and permanent way. As the viewer we assess Tunick's final works as photographs, but the artist himself speaks of his works as installations or performative interventions and as such the event is held to be more meaningful than the image that remains.
- Tunick has become a key figure in debates surrounding censorship and sexuality. He insightfully claims that being forced to pixilate or to cover any part of the naked anatomy in his photographs only serves to make his images sexual in a way that previously they were not at all. He is always playing and working at the boundary between historical notions of what it means to be "naked" versus "nude". He campaigns to allow bodies to exist in their natural state, neither hidden nor idealized.
- In a similar way to Land Artists, for example Robert Smithson and Richard Long, Tunick shares the view that man and nature can create great beauty when they work together. Whether in an urban or interior environment, or in a wild and vast outdoor setting, Tunick seeks to cultivate community and creativity in all settings. As do the individuals who make Street and Graffiti Art, or even those who painted their cave walls, Tunick seeks to disseminate the positive and universal impact that making one's mark has for humanity.
Progression of Art
Untitled (New York)
This black-and-white photograph was taken in New York City when Tunick was carrying out his Naked States project (photographing nude subjects in every one of the fifty American states). The pregnant lady volunteered to pose for Tunick before the shoot, whilst the older black man (along with his shopping cart full of empty cans and bottles) was recruited in the spur of the moment simply passing through the area where the shoot was taking place. The result is Tunick's classic early formula for making a photograph: the gritty streets of New York as his setting combined with chance encounter as his means to recruit models. In the image, the shopping cart is placed between the contrasting nude, light-skinned, heavily pregnant woman, and the clothed, skinny, black man. Both individuals rest one hand on the cart and peer curiously inside, leaning forward slightly. The subjects are foregrounded in the middle of an empty city street scene. A traffic sign and traffic lights can be seen slightly behind the figures. In the background is a historic building featuring a framing archway and rounded turrets.
A central question raised by all of Tunick's work has to do with the concept of naked vs. nude. Traditionally, in art history, the "nude" refers to an idealized, non-sexualized, and beautiful human form, whereas "nakedness" invokes notions of individual shame, embarrassment, sexuality, and even vulgarity. Tunick's work plays at the boundary of these two concepts, presenting the unclothed human form as both beautiful and vulnerable. In this photograph, the female subject's nakedness/nudity is emphasized by the fact that the male subject is clothed. Even early in his career, Tunick was aware of this tension in his work writing of Naked States that "The project [...] turned out not to feel very 'nude', it felt very 'naked' because I felt very much up against the laws. This project felt very stark and challenging. 'Naked' is more aggressive and 'nude' is simply more accepting."
In this early stage of his career, Tunick carried out much of his work in New York City. As Art in America critic Richard Vine, and Amy Gilman, Director of the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argue, Tunick's work has always been full of visual opposition, between the intimate and the public, and between the curves and softness of the human body and the roughness/sharpness of urban architecture. Tunick has also been interested in the way that the new contrasts with the old, and the natural marries the artificial. We see many of these contrasts in this image, as well as the artist's enduring sense of community and interest in intimate and creative human interaction, even in unlikely and hostile environments.
Gelatin silver print
Mexico City 4 (Zócalo, MUCA/UNAM)
This color photograph was taken in Mexico City's huge and iconic Zócalo Square. In the image, a vast 18,000 nude individuals (the greatest number that Tunick has photographed to date) lay on their backs flat on the ground. All of them face the same direction, with their heads angled toward the Palacio Nacional, which can be seen in the background of the image. Tunick notes that for this particular installation, "Forty-thousand people signed up, and at the last minute - three or four days before the event - the president of the country said I didn't have permission to use the Zócalo." However, Tunick refused to cancel the event, and fortunately "two days before the installation happened, we got the word from the president's office that we would be allowed to do the work. Over 20,000 came: 18,000 people were let in, 2,000 had to be left out. There were just too many."
Tunick had originally hoped to carry out the installation at the nearby Teotihuacan pyramids (considered the largest and most important Mesoamerican city, located about an hour's drive north of Mexico City), but he was not granted permission to do so, and thus the downtown Zócalo square was selected as a back-up location.
Tunick has said of his experience making this work, "It was just a great moment. No one would have thought that, of all the places in the world, Mexico City would have the most open-minded people when it came to their bodies." Furthermore, Tunick stated, "I think all eyes are looking south from the United States to Mexico City to see how a country can be free and treat the naked body as art. Not as pornography or as a crime, but with happiness and caring." However, despite an overwhelming positive response, not all locals were in favour of the work. Many citizens voiced disdain at the project, and raised ongoing issues surrounding propriety and censorship, such as a 63-year old local who was interviewed by Reuters and stated that the volunteer models were "losing dignity as men and women. It's an offense against the church."
This photograph, like many others by Tunick, features nude volunteers lying completely still on the ground, and thus alludes to war, death, and mass atrocity. Curator and artist Valentine Moreno suggests that there is "a progression towards an aesthetic formality also be noticed in installations in which Tunick requests the nude crowd to execute the same position. Such installations, with recognizable patterns, led critics to argue that the images communicate a message of mass conformity and compliance resembling Leni Riefenstahl's shots of German athletes performing calisthenics en mass at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin." By mentioning Riefenstahl (and therefore indirectly The Third Reich), Moreno connects with Tunick's recurring specters of genocide.
In today's global world we have not all experienced terror and destruction, but we have all seen the reportage of such events in the media. Whilst news images are often too shocking to process and comprehend as part of real life, Tunick helps by adding the distance, care, and stamp of authenticity of a professional artist. He manages to grab our attention by a clever means of re-imagining actuality (the same reason why children's books are more successful in communicating "big ideas" than more forthright publications). As softer images than those we find in news reports, with only imagined catastrophe before us, Tunick's work appeals to a sense of collective responsibility. Created in the hope that upon taking part in the work's making, or, upon looking at the resulting picture, people will awaken from ignorance and work harder to avoid conflict and live peacefully together.
Pigment print
Switzerland, Aletsch Glacier 1 (Greenpeace)
This impressive color photograph was taken at the Aletsch glacier (the largest glacier in the Alps, on the south side of the Jungfrau mountain in the Upper Rhone Valley, a protected UNESCO World Heritage site). In the image, approximately 600 nude volunteer models are spread out across this breathtaking epic landscape; they stand up straight with their arms down, and all directly face the camera. The volunteers and crew had to walk several hours to reach the site, and once there, other images were also taken of the subjects lying down before they decided on the standing pose. Overall it was a very physically demanding, as well as a camaraderie-building shoot for the participants.
The project was part of a Greenpeace billboard and poster campaign designed to raise awareness of global warming. Greenpeace stated that the aim in the images was to "establish a symbolic relationship between the vulnerability of the melting glacier and the human body." The environmental organization used this highly-publicized project as an opportunity to inform the public that "Alpine glaciers have lost about one-third of their length and half their volume over the past 150 years. The Aletsch ice mass has retreated by 115 meters (377 ft) in the last two years alone [...] if global warming continues unabated, most glaciers will disappear from the Earth by 2080."
Markus Allemann, campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Switzerland asserted, "The human body is as vulnerable as the melting glacier. These naked people are braving the cold today because they want decision-makers to wake up and take immediate, forceful, and courageous steps to protect the climate. There is still time, but it is running out. Climate change now requires fast and courageous political decisions to radically cut greenhouse gas emissions and stabilize global warming. Governments around the world must know that the people they represent expect and demand them to take action, and we hope that our collaboration with Spencer Tunick to create this living sculpture will focus their minds and sharpen their resolve."
Tunick considered the photographs from this project to function simultaneously as at once works of art and as political statements, stating, "I will try to treat the body on two levels. On an abstract level, as if they were flowers or stones. And on a more social level, to represent their vulnerability and humanity with regard to nature and the city and to remind people where we come from." In both proposed treatments, this particular work recalls the intensions and visual results of Land Art. Tunick's works becomes comparable with the likes of Robert Smithson and Richard Long, who both make human interventions in landscape to show that the two forces can work in harmony, or indeed are one and the same and with their fates intertwined.
Pigment print
Sydney 1 (Mardi Gras: The Base)
This remarkable color photograph was taken in front of the monumental Sydney Opera House. It involved over 5000 volunteer models of all ages, genders, sizes, colors, and sexual orientations, including a pregnant woman who was taken straight to hospital after the shoot to deliver her baby, and a well-known local TV weatherman. The models stripped off their clothes, and lay packed closely together on the ground in undulating rows to give the impression of a wavy sea of bodies.
As journalist Nick Bryant notes, "For once the eye was diverted away from the magnificent white sails of the Sydney Opera House. It was drawn instead to the tableau of naked flesh assembled on its steps." Tunick's explains his philosophy, stating that that "individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together, metamorphose into a new shape. The bodies extend into and upon the landscape like a substance. These grouped masses which do not underscore sexuality become abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one's views of nudity and privacy."
The work was commissioned by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Tunick explained that in the image, "Gay men and women lay naked next to their straight neighbors and this delivered a very strong message to the world that Australians embrace a free and equal society." The volunteers who modeled for this image echoed this sentiment, sharing overwhelmingly positive messages about their experience posing for the installation. For instance, one 19-year-old student who participated said later, "I'll never get a chance to do this again, it's not worth being inhibited. It doesn't feel sexual, it just feels tribal - a gathering of humanity." A middle-aged participant said that he "loved getting naked" and that the experience made him realize he only wore clothes "for comfort". The majority of participants at Tunick's other installations around the world similarly report that their experiences have been extremely positive and liberating.
Despite the impetus to make this work being based around a celebration of freedom, equality, and love, the resulting image darkly recalls genocide and the piles of bodies thrown into mass graves during various points of human history. Participants in the installation felt elated upon taking part, whilst viewers confronted by the final photograph experience nervousness that potential disaster looms. It is in this space in between extreme scenarios that Tunick poses questions. Perhaps overall he is trying to say that amid the ends of a spectrum there are infinite possibilities and that it is crucial that no aspect of a life should be forgotten or overlooked, so as to ensure that the miraculous cycle of life can indeed continue.
Pigment print
Dead Sea 8
This color photograph comes from a project in which Tunick enlisted 1,200 men and women from Israel to pose nude in the Dead Sea, which lies at the borders of Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan. In the image, the models stand partially immersed in the water, clustered more toward the right-hand side of the frame, with their backs facing the camera and their arms stretched overhead and their hands brought together in a pose of prayer. At the right-hand side of the background, dusty-red mountains recede into the distance. The tranquil salt water of the Dead Sea sits undisturbed on the left-hand side of the photograph.
Tunick carried out this project in order to subtly call attention to the fact that the water levels of the Dead Sea have been dropping by about 1.2 meters every year, and, related to this, although not immediately visible here, tens of thousands of sinkholes (a depression or hole in the ground) are appearing around the body of water with increasing frequency. Dr. Clive Lipchin, director of the Center for Trans-boundary Water Management at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies notes, "The Dead Sea we once knew doesn't exist anymore. The harm that has been done on all environmental levels has caused damages that are partly irreversible [...] the window of opportunity is narrow and will soon be closed." The pose adopted by the models in this photo, with hands clasped overhead, is one of pleading, as if they are imploring those in power to take this environmental crisis more seriously.
Tunick later stated, "Since 1991, I have traveled the world making immersive art with people of all races, religions, and nationalities. But Israel is a unique place that I hold close to my heart and is the only country in the Middle East where I can be allowed to have proper freedom of expression. I care deeply about the future of the Dead Sea and hope that my presence and involvement here can propel the Israeli government and local activists to take real measurable action to save the Dead Sea." Five years after this shoot, in 2016, he returned to Israel intending to once again stage photographs calling attention to this ongoing environmental issue, however, he noted that Israeli authorities were less welcoming the second time around. He said, "They don't want anyone to know - especially [since] it would hurt the tourism business - that access to the northern Dead Sea is very dangerous right now and sinkholes are getting worse." As with his Aletsch glacier image, Tunick makes an interesting reference to Land Art in this photograph and successfully highlights the power and beauty created when people and nature work together in harmony.
Pigment print
#WeTheNipple
At dawn on the morning of Sunday, June 2, 2019, Tunick gathered 125 volunteer models of all ages, colors, and sizes, outside Facebook's headquarters in Manhattan. The models were mostly women, but some men participated as well. The resulting photograph features the models standing in a close group, naked, facing the camera, with stickers of male nipples covering the female models' own nipples, as well as larger stickers covering all of the models' genitals. Each model also holds up an oversized sticker of a male nipple above their heads. The participants dominate the frame, with only a small strip of construction scaffolding and a "ONE WAY" sign visible above them in the background.
This image was part of the National Coalition Against Censorship's (NCAC) campaign called "#wethenipple", which seeks to stage a protest against social media's censorship of the female nipple. According to Tunick, the aim of the project was to get Facebook and Instagram to reconsider their policies regarding nudity and artistic expression. At present, these sites' policies state that women's nipples are not allowed to be displayed, unless in certain contexts, such as breastfeeding, or depicting mastectomy surgery. Meanwhile, no such restrictions apply to the display of male nipples. Tunick has suggested that Facebook and Instagram could follow the lead of YouTube, which now has "a verification process for artists, a platform for them to share their work." Tunick is no stranger to censorship on social media. For instance, after posting images on Facebook of an installation he carried out in Portugal, his account was disabled for violation of its terms (even though he had applied the requisite pixelation). He says that "Today, men walk around freely. The female nipple should be set free. It would take a few years to de-sensitize everyone, but I think it would lead to less violence against women and less problems with gender issues."
This use of stickers of male nipples served as what Nina Azzarello (editorial director of DesignBoom) refers to as "a cheeky bid to avoid running afoul of Facebook's policies - and to illustrate just how ludicrous they believe they are". The images of the male nipples were donated by artists/activists who have dealt with censorship in their own careers, such as artist Andres Serrano, actor-photographer Adam Goldberg, Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Spencer Tunick himself. The male nipple stickers were assigned to participants based on skin tone and areola size.
In fact, the use of the male nipple stickers in this work also pays homage to feminist artist Micol Hebron, whose 2014 project Male Nipples involved the creation of a male nipple pasty which fellow artists were encouraged to use to cover female nipples on social media. Tunick's project is also comparable to the work of Spanish graphic designer and photographer Manuel Ceballos, whose "postphotographic" project Pixon "presents an ironic form of feminine nude" by appropriating and manipulating photographs of nude females found online, censoring the entirety of the images with pixellation and leaving only the nipple intact and visible.
Tunick states, "There has to be a way artists can have a voice to show their works." Social media is a crucial aspect of many contemporary artists' artistic careers, as it is an important site for dissemination of their work, as well as (for Tunick) a place to recruit future volunteer models. Tunick notes, "the work I'm allowed to post is fundamentally different from the work I make. To me, every pixelated nipple only succeeds in sexualizing the censored work. As a 21st century artist, I rely on Instagram. It's the world's magazine and to be censored on it breaks my spirit."
We see here Tunick doing something quite different. By focusing in on a close up of the crowd we come to re-evaluate his other images of mass nude gatherings. So here, the question is raised as to whether being confronted by an image of people without their faces visible can ever really force action? Do faceless (mass) images generate enough individual, specific empathy? By making the face entirely visible, and as such giving a strong immediate impression of individual identity, one wonders if this image will be more successful in support of real positive change. This photograph, more than the rest of the artist's earlier oeuvre leans heavily on the side of protest rather than his previous pursuits of aesthetics and performance.
Digital image
Biography of Spencer Tunick
Childhood
Spencer Tunick was born into a Jewish family and grew up in upstate New York. His father, Earl, owned a keychain photo-viewer franchise that operated out of the Brown's Hotel in Loch Sheldrake, in the Catskills. His mother worked as an artist and interior designer. Tunick was inspired by his mother's artistry, and had the opportunity to experiment with his father's cameras. He recalls "I found a passion in documenting my ideas with photography, because I didn't have that sort of natural ability to paint or sculpt. My ideas were coming so quickly that I wanted to get them down on paper and that was black and white photography paper."
During his childhood, Tunick's parents took him on frequent visits to museums in New York City, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Met, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney, where he saw and felt inspired by works by Claes Oldenburg, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Pablo Picasso.
Tunick spent much of his youth near the Village of Wurtsbro, where his grandmother, Helen Morrell, owned a fashion boutique, and his grandfather, Leo, worked as a Sullivan County deputy sheriff. The couple also had a vacation cabin on Masten Lake, which Tunick visited frequently.
Tunick recalls, "I was a basketball star at military school. The son of the gangster John Gotti was there with me. Even then I had a rebellious streak, marching the military band up and down stairs." When he was 19, Tunick visited London, where he arranged and took some early experimental photographs of a single nude volunteer at a bus stop and of a group of nude volunteers in Alleyn's School's Lower School Hall in Dulwich, Southwark.
Education and Early Training
Tunick earned a Bachelor of Arts from Emerson College, Boston, in 1988. In the following years, as he was beginning his photography career, he supported himself by working at his father's keychain photo-viewer franchise in the Catskills on weekends. He would photograph hotel guests in their evening-wear, then hurry to Kerhonkson to develop the film before rushing back to the hotel to insert the slides into the viewer. At breakfast the next day at 7 a.m., he sold the images to the guests as souvenirs of their vacation. He says "I lost my weekends, but I made enough money so that I didn't have to work a regular job during the week." This allowed him to spend his weekdays working on his art.
In 1990, he attended the International Center of Photography in New York City, where he lived in the East Village, in an apartment on "C" street, and became part of the New York art scene. That same year, he began taking photos and videos of live nudes (mostly individuals or small groups) in public locations around New York City. He recalls, "I started shooting on the weekends in the East Village and the financial district."
In 1993 and 1994, he developed an interest in Performance and Installation Art, and sought a way to incorporate elements of these into his photographic work. He says, "I began thinking, 'How can I change a photograph to make a document of some action, or performance-oriented action; how can I do this with photography?'" It has always been clear in the work of Tunick that he is equally interested in interaction with his participants as he is the making of a photograph.
A turning point in Tunick's career came in 1994, when he posed and photographed a larger group of 28 nude people in front of the United Nations Building in Midtown, New York. Since then, he has carried out over 125 such large-scale projects, which he refers to as "temporary site-specific installations" and "human installations", in over 25 countries around the world.
Tunick began to recruit volunteer models for his larger installations in New York by handing out flyers in the street. He recalls that in the early years of his career, he "was worried someone would take the flyer and hand it straight to a police officer." If the individual expressed interest, he would show them a miniature portfolio that he carried in his wallet, in order to demonstrate the type of work he was creating, and to reassure prospective models that what he did was art, not pornography. For several years now, he has also had a model application/registration form available on his website, where applicants are asked to identify their gender and skin tone. In executing his projects, he often groups models according to these criteria.
Tunick notes that he tries not to re-use the same models, and also tries to avoid recruiting individuals from nudist organizations. In this way, he says "On Tuesday [the models] were just everyday people and they often have strong reactions because it might be the first time they are nude in public. They each have their own reactions to participation. Most people think they can predict what it feels like, but it's a collective, new experience for the body." His models have remarked that their experiences of participating in his nude projects in public spaces have been, "meaningful, remarkable, memorable, transformative".
Since the beginning of his career, Tunick has found the urban landscape of New York City to be very inspiring, saying, "Working in a city where the buildings were not just a few stories high was a new visual experience for me. There was a canyon-like feel to those streets lined with skyscrapers." He also remarked that the city looked much different than it does today, stating that "it was less policed - no security cameras or surveillance - and the landscape was more beautiful," and "There were no preventative one-meter concrete or steel structures blocking off buildings that would ruin the vision of the cityscape. If you saw a courthouse, there would be a beautiful set of stairs, just flowing into the street."
In those early years, Tunick consciously aimed to complete his nude installations clandestinely and quickly, to avoid any encounter with the authorities. He says "I had several years of working in this magic apocalyptic jungle of barren streets [...] I felt most safe and comfortable in the city at sunrise, when there was no traffic, perhaps only a car driving by every three minutes. This place was a massive studio for me - and it was empty."
Despite efforts to be discreet, Tunick had several run-ins with law enforcement while carrying out his controversial projects. Between 1994 and 1999, he was arrested five times in New York alone; including once in 1994 when he and a model were arrested while he was photographing the model perched atop of an eight-foot high replica Christmas tree in Manhattan's Rockerfeller Center, once in January 1996 when he and two models (including his future wife Kristin Bowler) were arrested while posing at the top of a snow drift, and then again in Times Square whilst photographing 150 nude individuals in 1997. He later explained that these experiences altered his former "romantic idea" of being arrested in the name of art. He says, "Being handcuffed is very painful. To get stuffed in the police car, it's very traumatic [...] It's humiliating and it's a very dangerous situation. You are in [jail] with anyone: they could have committed a horrific crime or jumped the subway turnstile." Although always ultimately dropped, charges against Tunick have included unlawful assembly, creating a violent act, disorderly conduct, public exposure, and reckless endangerment.
Tunick began to come up with strategies to avoid problems with the police, explaining that "I once had a person dress up as a mythical magician, with a pointy hat and a magician suit, and when the police came by, we'd pretend to be photographing him," and "Once, I had somebody dressed up in a grape suit; like, a giant grape. Another time, when I was on the Brooklyn Bridge and police would come as people were gathering, we had a sign that said Bird Watching Tour." Nevertheless, having to constantly come up with strategies of distraction alongside feeling the brunt of the city's censorship continued to bother him. It was around this time that Tunick was quoted saying "In the past the New York administration considered the body to be a crime, or pornographic. I hope this administration considers the vulnerability of the body."
Mature Period & Current Work
From 1999-2001, Tunick spent two years fighting in court for permission to carry out his photography in New York City's public spaces, on the grounds that as a working artist they were preventing him from earning a living. He finally won the case, and New York police were prohibited from interfering with the artist's public nude installations, on the terms that they were unpublicized, and kept to less than one hundred participants.
From that point onward, several art institutions around the world, including the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal and the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art in Newcastle, commissioned and supported some new Tunick installations. He notes that the project in Montreal was particularly significant, as he "started to be able to relax, and my work started to change." As curator and artist Valentine Moreno writes, "Museums and art institutions provide Tunick with a solid structure and organization, since museums handle all travel, logistics, legal permits, and negotiations with local governments. Museums also guarantee safety and security, ensuring police protection for Tunick and the participants. Furthermore, museums provide all the necessary funding, which may be private or public, depending on the nature of the institution. Additionally, by allying with museums, Tunick guarantees a large number of volunteers and great media exposure through the museum's press office, official website, and printed material. The installations usually happen connected to an exhibition, which enhances the artist's curriculum; and finally, and most importantly, under the museum's umbrella, Tunick's controversial artwork is authorized and validated as art."
In 1999, Tunick set out on a road trip around the USA, with the aim of photographing nudes in public in all 50 states. The project was documented in the HBO documentary film Naked States (2001). Building on the success of this idea, in 2001, he began a similar but international project, titled Nude Adrift, in which he set out to complete at least one nude installation in each of the seven continents.
In 2002, Tunick was invited to participate in the 25th São Paulo Biennale, indicating his positive reception within the international art community. That same year, he completed a project with 5000 volunteers in Chile, and was subsequently named "Man of the Year" by a Chilean newspaper.
In June 2003, Tunick set the world record for the largest nude photo shoot, when he photographed 7000 volunteers in Barcelona. He subsequently broke his own record in May 2007 when he photographed 18000 nude volunteers in Mexico City's Zocalo Square.
Tunick is married to painter Kristin Bowler, with whom he fell in love with having seen her at St. Marks Place, New York. He gave Bowler his card and asked her to model for him, but she never called and it was not until a year later when they met again at a party that their relationship started. Bowler talks of how she was strongly attracted to Tunick's confidence and fearlessness. The couple have two daughters together, Seda and Isla.
Tunick and Bowler have collaborated artistically, for instance, with Tunick photographing nude models alongside Bowler's paintings. The couple also organized the nude, all-female protest against the hateful rhetoric spewed by Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.
Tunick and Bowler lived for a time in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, where Tunick worked out of a fifth-floor studio in North Tribeca. His studio featured a large room set up with cameras for taking individual nudes, however the room got little use, as he continued to focus more on large-scale public installations, spending most of his studio time editing at his computer.
In 2006, Tunick and Bowler purchased a 2,200-square-foot, turn-of-the-century, three-story, four-bedroom house in Suffern, New York, and Tunick now works out of a converted barn behind the home. Tunick says of Suffern "No one really knows about this town. They see it on the highway, but they don't know it exists," he says. "There are a lot of storefronts for people to hopefully open coffee shops and liquor stores and whatever [...] I would love to open up a hiking shack/coffee shop in the corner of town, take people up for hikes, and then of course photograph them naked on the side of the mountain, but that's beside the point."
Many friends and guests stay with the couple regularly and sometimes help take care of the couple's daughters so that Tunick and Bowler "can go out and rage in New York" (their home is located five minutes from the local train station, making it easy to travel to and from the city). New York City continues to be an important place for Tunick, who says, "The reason why I love New York, and why it's my home, is because of its people. I think New York is this juggernaut of humanity."
The Legacy of Spencer Tunick
Comparisons can be drawn between Tunick's work and the photographic oeuvre of Vanessa Beecroft, who also photographs groups of nudes in public spaces often with overt political associations. Tunick's work is also comparable to the 2018 project Weil Ich Dich Liebe (Because I Love You) by performance artist and activist Mischa Badasyan and his partner, photographer Abdulsalam Ajaj, which involved photographing ordinary people nude inside subway stations. More widely, and outside the genre of photography, Tunick's work strikingly updates the long tradition of the nude. Since a taboo of nudity has developed, bodies in art have been portrayed as either hidden or idealized. Tunick, by contrast, depicts the body as utterly natural and at peace in its exposure. Indeed, fellow contemporary photographer Wolfgang Tillmans says, "I find it amazing that the body is not treated in a matter of fact, relaxed way. It is either idealized or hidden. Happiness, in a way, is found in accepting your own body".
Due to the content of his pictures, as well as his working methods, Tunick has become a vital figure in debates surrounding censorship since the 1990s (in the same way that Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe were in previous decades). Tunick's successful court battle against the city of New York in the late 1990s set an important precedent, shifting public understandings of nudity away from connotations of indecency, obscenity, and immorality, toward a greater appreciation of the nude human body as beautiful, and a work of art in its own right. More recently, in his 2019 "#WeTheNipple" campaign made in collaboration with the National Coalition Against Censorship, Tunick has been creating activist art that aims to challenge inequitable social media policies that forbid the publication of images of the female (but not the male) nipple.