Nude From Home: Nude Artist Holds Naked Shoot Amid Lockdown, Who's On Board?

American photographer Spencer Tunick is famous for gathering hundreds and thousands of people to pose for his eye-opening mass nude photo projects.

Previous works have seen the artist turn sites such as Sydney Opera House into a mass of bare bodies, all under the aegis of art. However, with the influence of coronavirus outbreak which sent him into quarantine in New York, he had to come up with a solution for his work and it is video conferences. Yes, video conferences can also work for nudism, at least in this case.

So, Spencer Tunick’s brand new medium "Stay Apart Together" witnesses him asking groups of participants with face masks to take everything off and assume connected pose before the artist captured all of them in a collage.

Sharing about the idea of this, he said over the phone from New York’s Rockland County,

"My work is getting nude people as close as possible to form an abstraction. And I'm not able to do that for the foreseeable future."

This is not the first time the photographer did a group nude project, the only thing that differs is the method.

Until the moment, the shoots have seen the feature of many from various countries like Thailand, Lebanon, South Africa, and Uruguay. Tunick is still searching for more models across the globe with the hope to add in a wide range of sizes, shapes, nationalities, and professions and a “full rainbow” of skin tones.

He also added that this project is letting him work with those who he might not have the chance to.

For the unversed, someone in Syria recently reached out to them and that truly is a big deal. With this video conferencing service that has a limit of 50 people calling each time, his upcoming photos will have up to 49 people at a time.

For the uninitiated, the 53-year-old artist hopes that his project can bring a feeling of togetherness between participants as they are now living with the self-isolation and lockdown measures.

He said,

"I thought that (video shoots) would be a great way to bring people together from different countries. But I never knew how much emotion it would bring to the people participating. It definitely reaffirmed that visual art and a collective community making art in this time period is possible."

Here are some other projects the artist had carried out:

As many galleries have been closed around the globe, the photos will be displayed on the photographer’s Instagram account for now. Some will be censored, he said, as he must make them blur to prevent being kicked off the platform.