War correspondents have felt less trepidation before journalistic assignments. Spencer Tunick, the American artist who makes photographic mosaics using naked bodies, arrived in Dublin yesterday and I was dispatched to bare all for art’s sake.

Tunick’s first Irish project in Cork last week had been hailed as a life-changing, liberating experience by participants. Volunteer models described feeling elated and energised after the communal disrobing.

So what would Dublin make of its brush with the photographer’s brand of flesh architecture? Would locals have the bare-faced cheek to make it a success?

You will never pay as much attention to the weather forecast as the night before spending a morning naked on a pier in Ringsend. TV3’s forecaster, Martin King, had jauntily announced that we were in for showers.

While participants in Cork on Tuesday frolicked in early-morning dew at Blarney Castle, Dublin’s 2,500 nude volunteers got a bum deal. Tunick may have convinced 18,000 Mexicans to bare all for his largest study, but they weren’t on an exposed pier with an easterly wind whipping in from the Irish sea.

This is why naturism will never catch on in Ireland, one wag joked, as we filed out of buses and onto the pier.

Creating one of Tunick’s oddly depersonalised nude tableaux involves painstaking organisation. In an enigmatic e-mail, participants were told to be at South Wall at 3am and to bring money for tea and coffee. But where to carry the cash?

The event might last until 7am, we were warned, although models would only be naked for about 30 minutes. Tunick has never shown us his, but when the command finally came at 5am to show him ours, there was a stampede to get starkers. Bottom line was that nobody wanted to be first, or last, so hundreds of wobbly bits spilled out in a communal frenzy of undressing.

At first, the scene was studiously nonchalant, as exaggeratedly casual conversations struck up. I had imagined lines of uncomfortable men cupping their groins as if defending imaginary free kicks. Instead volunteers slapped their thighs and played drums on their stomachs.

A middle-aged woman sang Patricia the Stripper in a thick Dublin accent. Someone bumped into an acquaintance and giggled. But there was a remarkable absence of self-consciousness as all creatures great, small and hairy blended into a giant human landscape.

At 5:30am, Tunick began photographing our goose-bumped skin canvas from his scaffold. As he issued commands through a loudspeaker, the multitude stood to attention and, on demand, collapsed into foetal positions on the cobblestoned ground. A number of people in wheelchairs participated, helped by carers.

After 30 minutes, Tunick dissolved the scene, just as it began to rain on the naked parade and people scampered to retrieve their clothes. The photographer attempted to set up another photo-shoot, asking volunteers to walk into an ankle-deep pool of water. “You’re wet anyway,” Tunick implored, but to no avail.

In the past, Tunick has photographed nudes on a melting Swiss glacier to highlight climate change and in 1996 he photographed two models in a Manhattan snowdrift. But after four hours exposed to the elements and each other, his Dublin models had had enough. All bar a few hundred departed as the rain grew heavier. The remaining hypothermic volunteers splashed about in the water before striking solemn poses, heads bowed.

Tunick has suffered for his art and was once imprisoned. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, called him offensive and invasive, while in Chile his human landscapes were described as pornographic.

Tom Lawlor, a professional photographer who has taken group and personal nude portraits, said it was a sign of Ireland’s maturity that so little fuss was made over Tunick’s endeavours last week.

“You couldn’t have imagined it 10 years ago. But it’s great to see such a range of people, all ages, colours and body shapes, joining together,” Lawlor said. “Nudity is a great leveller. It creates a real sense of community.”

Lawlor’s one reservation is that Tunick doesn’t undress himself. “I’d like to have seen him join in. He was quite aloof up on his pedestal. If he had been freezing too, there would have been more of an empathy with the volunteers,” he said.

Mischa Downey, an American studying in Ireland, previously took part in a Tunick installation in Cleveland, Ohio. “There was probably more exhibitionism in Cleveland, more showing off. The Dublin people were quite reserved, although there were plenty of jokes,” she said.

The Dublin Docklands Authority said the turn-out was bigger than anticipated. “Some arrived at 10:30pm on Friday night to make sure that they got to take part. It was a pity about the rain, but it held off for just long enough,” it said.

Tunick is threatening to return. “The response was overwhelming. I can’t believe so many people showed up. I hope to be back,” he said. Next time, though, we might heed the forecast.

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