Spencer Tunick Exposes Israel To Dead Sea Plight

All images copyright Spencer Tunick/Naked Pavement Inc.

Installation artist Spencer Tunick photographed one of his most ambitious projects to date On Saturday 17 September. It consisted of a large group of nude volunteers at the Dead Sea in Israel.1,200 volunteers ranging in age from 20 to somewhere in their sixties set out for the Dead Sea before dawn and modelled in three different arrangements: in the sea, on land and covered in Dead Sea mud.

Tunick chose the Dead Sea for his latest project to deliver an environmental message highlighting the plight of the world’s lowest and saltiest body of water. The fabled salty lake is dropping more than a metre a year. The project has produced some beautiful images and everyone seemed to have a good time! Tunick wrote in a statement, “I look forward to your support in exposing a part of Israel that has not been seen before and at the same time bring attention to the deteriorating situation of the Dead Sea.”Experts have repeatedly warned that the Dead Sea could dry out by 2050 unless vital measures are taken to halt the decay of the world’s lowest and saltiest body of water, experts say.

Spencer Tunick was born in the US in Orange County, New York in January 1, 1967. He is an American artist best known for his installations that feature large numbers of nude people posed in artistic formations. These installations are often situated in urban locations throughout the world, although he has also done some “Beyond The City” woodland and beach installations and still does individuals and small groups occasionally. Tunick is the subject of three HBO documentaries, Naked States,[1] Naked World,[2] and Positively Naked.[3] His models are unpaid volunteers who receive a limited-edition photo as compensation. In 1986, he visited London, where he took photographs of a nude at a bus stop and of scores of nudes in Alleyn’s School’s Lower School Hall in Dulwich, Southwark. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Emerson College in 1988. In 1992, Tunick began documenting live nudes in public locations in New York through video and photographs. His early works from this period focus more on a single nude individual or on small groups of nudes. These works are much more intimate images than the massive installations for which he is now known. By 1994 Tunick had organized and photographed over 65 temporary site-related installations in the United States and abroad. Since then, he has taken his celebration of the nude form internationally and has taken photos in cities that include Byron Bay, Cork, Dublin, Bruges, Buenos Aires, Buffalo, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Melbourne, Montreal, Rome, San Sebastián, São Paulo, Caracas, Newcastle/Gateshead, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Helsinki, Santiago, Mexico City, Sydney and Amsterdam. In August 1997, Tunick also photographed a large group of nudes at The Great Went, a festival hosted by American rock band Phish in Maine.

All images copyright Spencer Tunick/Naked Pavement Inc.

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