Monday, June 8, 2009

Sheer fun

Last summer the American artist Spencer Tunick did two installations (in the Dublin Docklands and Blarney Castle), which featured - oh, hundreds and hundreds of naked folk.

I had friends (of all ages, one heavily pregnant) who took part. Despite momentary pangs of 'I posed naked!?!', in their recounting the shoots sound like kooky, beautiful experiences. The images have been released today (Irish Times article here; Blarney site here; Docklands site here - the www.tunickireland.com site that all are quoting doesn't seem to be up and running yet).

The distance shots set out a landscape of bodies, where bodies form roads or meadows... and there's something very effective about a massive pattern of individual things creating an impression of uniformity (reminds me of Anthony Gormley's Field series (above)).

In terms of posing, the Docklands folk certainly had the more gruelling photo shoot, trudging out naked in the cold and lying on freezing stone:

They're very different installations, and each packs a punch. But if you had to choose favourites, mine would be this one from the Blarney shoot. It's down to the warmth of the greens and roses; something very modern and very medieval about the image, with perhaps a splash of Alice in Wonderland thrown in:



Every brave soul who took part will receive two prints from the day, and well deserved. Congratulations to all; fantastic images!

3 comments:

TomRourke said...

Yep, with you on the Blarney images.

Orlaith said...

Yeah it was a lovely composition, and Sharon R. and Emer are in there somewhere :-)

TomRourke said...

REALLY? I'd have paid much more attention if I'd known that!