4/28/2003: Tunick in London store

[Undertoad]

Doc noticed that this morning's The Telegraph had a story this morning on a Spencer Tunick setup in Selfridge's a department store in central London. That meant at 6 AM yesterday there were 600 naked people wandering around the store, and Tunick could set up one of his group installations for photographs.

From the story: Ellen Ritman, 51, a writer from London, was one of the volunteers. "I found it exciting and liberating. The feeling was one of calm enjoyment. At my age it was a perfect thing to do, to look at other people's bodies and mine, and to remember how beautiful we all are. His work is wonderful."

That's part of it, and another part of it is the contrast that always happens in Tunick's work, between the warm human body and its cold surroundings. Tunick notes in the story that "I was able to use the interior of the store to capture the anonymity of public and private spaces. The idea was to bring the body up against commerce and create a tension between them."

The Telegraph also has an interesting first-person account of what it was like to be naked in a big city department store. And the author makes another interesting point: "[Tunick's] images are often spectacular, but there will be a splendid element of rejection in the Selfridges pictures - several hundred people all devoid of anything the shop could sell."

Also, I'm not sure whether any of the previous IotD Tunick shots included Tunick's own URL. He has his own website now featuring many more of his interesting shots.