i love this guy's stuff.

beyond the media spectacle of the event each time he does one of these

and beyond the social aspect to getting so many people to participate in a volunteer art project when they could be doing other things,

the photographs (his photographs, not the documentary ones) are just beautiful.

and he did after another shot of like a hundred women, characterized (but still naked) as Frida Kahlo @ the Frida Kahlo house museum in Coyoacan (neighborhood)...

the image up here is of the Zocalo (mexico city main square, downtown)

I'm fascinated by all the little piles of clothes as much as by all the naked people.

His work is a weird play of inclusion (bringing thousands of people together on equal terms) and exclusion (the police apparently had to keep the public away while they set up the square).

i'm conflicted about spencer...on the one hand there is noone else
doing this scale of work (as far as numbers of naked bodies)...but he's
been doing this for years now... what's the next logical step? has his
work progressed over those years?

i guess on the one hand he's been able to get more people to pose
for him in terms of shear numbers due to his work (and court cases)
gaining him notoriety...but his work seemed to be avante garde at
one point with obvious shock value..but now it's sort of just about
numbers.

but then again maybe with those numbers it becomes more about
shade/shadow/pattern and less about individual bodies...

like i said i'm conflicted.

I say he should try to do it with Naked Cows, or Naked Bears, or Naked Elephants......it would certainly carry the same degree of
shock...

i agree with you agfa8x.

the 20' threshold between the nakies and their clothes is great.

of course the cows, bears and elephants would be required to leave their clothes in little piles....like the people.

... or you could let a bear loose in the square full of naked people.

I think lars put his finger on what I think is strongest in Tunick's work - the shift from an individual naked body to mass effects of shade, pattern, shadow. From body to field.

i think for challenge, his next step shall be in iran/iraq or paki.

yeah, that might not go down so well... may be better off with the bear.

This is awesome. I am amazed at the sheer number of people he got for this one....18,000? That's a whole stadium full of people. And in the early morning. Imagine the sensation of walking around in the nippy morning air with 17,999 other naked people shivering when all you want to do is put on a jacket.....talk about cutting glass! Ha, sorry.

wk I doubt they were thinking they wanted a jacket - perhaps something else

anybody read Perfume by Patrick Suskind??

there was a recent movie with Dustin Hoffman that i heard was not oo good...but the book is AWESOME!

anyway, there's a scene in it that i'm reminded of now when i think of hanging out with 18k other nekkid' folks.

also, the main characters name is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille which sounds delicious as it rolls off the tongue.

should have taken pictures of the thousands of clothes on the floor... since they were making a line to register since early in the morning that would have made a more dramatic picture..

peace\