A two-year undertaking launched by an unofficial Facebook group culminated on Saturday with a successful mass photo shoot at the Dead Sea, in what was the latest installation of photographer Spencer Tunick's unique form of art. The event was designed in part to bolster the chances of the Dead Sea in the New Seven Wonders competition, a global contest to name the new seven wonders of the world, which is currently holding its final round of voting. By dawn Saturday morning the subjects of the photo shoot had assembled on the beach, ready to follow orders from Tunick and his crew, with heavy security blocking access to would-be intruders. The media was restricted to a secured area in what looked like a heavily fortified cage. Tunick and his team planned the shoot like a military operation, out of fear for potential sabotage or protests. The location of the photo shoot was not disclosed in advance and participants arrived by pre-arranged transportation. Tunick, who in 1992 began to photograph individual nudes in black and white in front of well-known buildings on the streets of New York, quickly discovered the unique idea that has made him one of the most famous photographers in the world: group photographs of nudes. It started with a series of photographs of 28 naked bodies. My first group photograph was at the entrance to the United Nations building in New York. I posed a group of people nude and screaming because I wanted to scream about the massacre in Rwanda that was happening at the time, Tunick says. His record photograph is of 18,000 nude people in Mexico City. The project was criticized by right-wing and religious Israeli figures who have called his work perverse. Despite the opposition, Tunick managed to get all the necessary green lights for his installation. He even praised Israelis for their openness, saying that holding such an event in the Middle East should not be taken for granted. The idea to bring Tunick to Israel came about two years ago as part of a final project by five students in the communications program at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. The group, which was led by Sharon Gittelman, then a student specializing in interactive media and currently the owner of her own social media consulting and branding firm, started a group on Facebook called Spencer Tunick Puts Israel on the Map. The idea was to take photographs that would show Israels landscapes and the liberal nature of its citizens to the world. The message reached Tunick, himself Jewish, and he was glad to take up the challenge and get Israelis to take off their clothes. When I heard about the group on Facebook, I thought it was amazing, mostly because Im very honored that they wanted me to come and photograph in Israel. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was the right thing for Israelis who wanted to cooperate in something that was very liberal, enlightened and representative of creative and artistic freedom. When I was working on my craft, I took quite a few individual photographs of nudes in Israel," Tunick said before the shoot. "I always dreamed of doing a nude group photo in Tel Aviv, in Netanya or at the Dead Sea. I was glad my Facebook friends helped me find people who were interested in being photographed and also took care of the funding, because this is a complex process that requires a great deal of fund-raising to make the photo shoot happen." "I hope to raise awareness about the place and help it to become recognized as one of the seven new wonders of the world," says Tunick.
Spencer Tunick snaps Dead Sea photo shoot despite opposition
Some 1,000 volunteers gather at the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, for the first mass nude photo shoot in Israel • Organizers hope event boosts the Dead Sea's standing in New Seven World Wonders global competition.
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