Spencer Tunick
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Spencer Tunick (born January 1 1967) is an American artist. Tunick was born in Middletown, New York, USA. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Emerson College in 1988. He is best known for his installations that feature large numbers of nude people posed in artistic formations. In these images the nude form becomes abstract due to the sheer number so closely placed together. Known as installations, they are often situated in urban locations throughout the world. He also has done some "Beyond The City" woodland and beach installations and still does individuals and small groups occasionally.
"A body is a living entity. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it - if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.” (Spencer Tunick)
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.
In 1992, Tunick started out 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 to small groups of nudes. These works are much more intimate images than the massive installations for which he's now known. His photos quickly became popular and he spread out to other states in America. 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 international, and has taken photos in cities that include Bruges, Buenos Aires, Buffalo, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Melbourne, Montreal, Rome, San Sebastián, São Paulo, Caracas, Newcastle/Gateshead, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Helsinki, Santiago, Mexico City and Amsterdam. In August of 1997, Tunick photographed a large group of nudes at The Great Went, a festival hosted by Phish in Limestone, Maine.
In late 2001, on an trip to Australia ,visited friend Australian Generation X Pastellist James DeWeaver,while he was still living in Byron Bay ,Australia,and was one of a small group models to take part in a return to,though briefly,the smaller more intimate,less industrial sized groups of nudes ,for which he is recognized for today.This Tunick photo can be seen at jamesdeweaver.com .
