For a man whose consuming passion is photographing naked bodies, Spencer Tunick is surprisingly ambivalent about his own. Listening to the self-confessed stocky New York installation artist talk about living in his own skin, you could be in conversation with a middle-aged housewife. “I’m not 100 per cent comfortable with my body, no,” he says, his face suddenly turning a soft shade of pink. “I have issues about not being in shape, not being fit. I am very sensitive to people who are not perfect physically . . .” his voice trails off, his eyes head for the floor.
But when he steps behind the lens to direct others to pose nude, he is fearless. And gargantuan in scope. Famous and infamous for his work, Tunick, 38, is the man who assembles mass crowds of naked people in public, then photographs, videotapes and exhibits them, all in the name of art. In 2003 he assembled 160 naked people outside County Hall in London for the opening of the Saatchi Gallery; and then 600 on the escalators in Selfridges on Oxford Street. He has also photographed 7,000 in Barcelona, 4,500 in Melbourne, 4,000 in Chile and 2,500 in Montreal.
“I am not a pornographer,” he says, clearly frustrated by those who suggest otherwise. “The installations are not meant to be sexual. I use the body as an organism that runs over streets and seeps into corners, and rises and falls in sync with the outdoor environment. Sometimes 4,000 people can resemble grass in the wind, or a forest of kelp.”
But what the 2,000 Britons posing naked for Tunick next Sunday around the Newcastle Gateshead quays might morph into the married father of a seven-month-old daughter isn’t saying. Commissioned by Baltic, Gateshead’s centre for contemporary art, and BBC Three (which will film the event for TV), the installation will be Tunick’s largest in the UK. “I never give details of locations or what I am planning until the day, to prevent gawkers. But I can tell you I’m excited to be working in England again.” Hearing him toss off that I’mexcited-to-be-back bit, you could groan, but Tunick is being neither polite nor diplomatic. He insists that his installations in the UK in 2003 exceeded his expectations because the British caught him off guard. Surprisingly, he found them particularly fervent in getting their kits off in public.
“I’m not saying that famous British reserve has disappeared. But the individuals who participated in my installations in London were the most enthusiastic of any I’ve ever seen. And I think it was because Britons are traditionally more reserved, so getting naked publicly was such a big jump for them. But once they committed to it, they really gave it their all. I don’t think Britons have a problem with nudity, but I think the body is often oversexualised in the tabloid press in a way that mocks the individual’s ability to be nude and feel dignified.”
Of the people who have responded to the call from Baltic to participate, he believes that only half will turn up. This, he admits, is always the case. “It’s not like booking a ticket for a flight where you really have to show up. People sign up because they are curious, then suddenly realise that they just can’t go that far. You have to be brave to do this.” (He concedes that he has not posed in any of his photographs, but says that he will one day.)
Tunick claims to know, with a simple glance at their appearance, who in a crowd of thousands will pose naked. “Before tattoos became trendy, you knew people with tattoos were open to it. People with piercings also. When I hand out flyers inviting people to participate I don’t give them to women who wear gold jewellery or pearls, or men who wear business suits. You know that they don’t take risks with their bodies. Once I handed a flyer to a guy in a serious suit and he marched right over to a policeman and gave it to him. So I’ll certainly never make that mistake again.”
What he is adamant about, however, is using all body types and ages in his work. And, in his experience, he gets what he wants. “You might think that only people who are fit and confident in their bodies would do this. But every size shows up; fat, thin, beer belly, bad knees. My only caveat is that I try not to work with nudists or exhibitionists. I want everyday people, so it can be a work that encompasses all individuals, not just those who are comfortable nude.”
Born in upstate New York, the son of a hotel photographer, Tunick studied film and speech at Emerson college in Boston before taking up photography in 1991. He started off small, shooting one nude body at a time, often friends on streets at dawn. “I liked that a nude body gave new meaning to the environment.” Gradually he started grouping larger numbers together, until in 1994 he arrived at the point where mass nude installations interested him most.
“One reason I started the series was because I wasn’t satisfied with what I was seeing out there in nudes in art. Another was to get people and societies to think about their own relationship to the body. Nudity can have all these cultural connotations: that it is forbidden, evil; and that sexuality needs to be hidden. What I want to say is that the body is beautiful. It’s about love and life and has great energy.”
But even people who have healthy relationships with their bodies don’t pose for Tunick. In fact, it’s a select breed who do. “First off, they’re not exhibitionists,” he says of those who will stand or lie naked on the streets in Newcastle next week. “And in my experience people don’t get naked just for the sake of it. I think they want to make an artwork (participants are not paid; they receive a photograph). Others enjoy the opportunity to ask friends or family to be naked in public with them in a different way from, say, skinny-dipping or a thrill- seeking situation.”
Tunick is emphatic that he is making art in Newcastle. “It’s all about using the body to form shapes that transform urban settings.” Yes, but in order to make those shapes he often demands that thousands of men and women lie adjacent or over each other in a way that may give rise, pardon the pun, to feelings of sexual arousal. Tunick shakes his head.
“I actually think that for some of the participants, it’s disappointingly not as erotic as they would like it to be,” he says grinning. “I work fast and you are naked for short amounts of time; we move to different locations. It’s actually going to be a busy morning in Newcastle. But I think that the thought of joining in the event can be erotic for some, and certainly the memory of it. But in my experience from doing these installations everywhere from Spain to Austria, from Portugal to Italy, is that men rarely get erections. It’s difficult to get aroused doing this. It’s too much of a regimented procedure for thoughts of sex to enter the picture.”
Yet while Tunick swears that participants don’t suddenly start getting hot and heavy on the concrete, he says there is a very real charge to their self-esteem. “Many write to me afterwards that doing the installation shifted their sense of self. People who have issues with weight, or have cancer or HIV and feel conflicted about their bodies felt better about them afterwards.
“We live in a world where the media can go out of its way to mock those in the public eye whose bodies aren’t perfect and it’s easy to absorb the message that an extra 10lb or 50lb makes you unworthy. When people pose I think it heightens their awareness of their own bodies, how precious life is, and how connected you really are to your neighbour.”
Tunick says the age range of participants is usually 18 to 40 and the gender divide always 50-50. Except that is, in Brazil. “Even though they wear next to nothing on the beach, it’s considered undignified for a woman to be completely naked.” The Finns, he says, are the most relaxed about getting naked; in Hawaii parents brought their children.
But across Europe and the US, the naked bodies who have dominated Tunick’s work have been Caucasian, and that bugs him. “Maybe there are religious or cultural taboos, I’m not sure. But I would love more races to be involved.”
It’s difficult to understand how in a world where nudity is so ubiquitous Tunick still manages to incense so many. People who have no problem staring at the Page 3 girl on the Tube or downloading porn at work can, he says, find him objectionable. He has been arrested five times in the US while shooting nude crowds, he has been picketed in Santiago in Chile, and denounced for being immoral.
“There is still a lot of negativity surrounding the body, particularly in cultures that are politically repressed or religious. And the size of the installations forces the issue of nudity on people, and that’s a can of worms. But I look at it as not the bad kind, but that can of worms you use on your garden to help things grow.”
To take part in Tunick’s next installation on July 17, in Newcastle Gateshead, register in advance at www.balticprojects.org/tunick.
BBC Three broadcasts Naked City: Spencer Tunick in Newcastle Gateshead, on the same day at 10.30pm (www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree).
