Spencer Tunick

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Spencer Tunick, 2007

Spencer Tunick (born January 1, 1967 in Middletown , New York ) is an American photographer. Tunick is best known for his temporary installations of naked people , who mostly “pose” as iconographic symbols in urban contexts. Tunick has now implemented more than 65 installations worldwide.

Tunick graduated from Emerson College in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts . In 1992 he began taking photos of the nude in the streets of New York . With his recordings he quickly became known all over the USA. Tunick has been installing installations around the world since the mid-1990s.

Spencer Tunick's models work basically free of charge in the body installations he has documented in photographs and videos. As a thank you for your participation, you will receive a photo of the installation, either signed or printed with your signature and produced in a limited edition.

Tunick sees his pictures less as nudes and more as landscape sculptures. Tunick puts it in a context with participatory art , as it emerged in the 1960s: “Not many artists let people become part of a work of art. Usually you have to pay admission to see works of art. And then you are just a viewer. But at the moment there are approaches for participation to become art itself. ” Tunick is accused of pursuing a single basic idea with “ monomaniacal persistence ” and of using “ cheap alienation effects ” .

There are similarities with the work of Vanessa Beecroft , but she works with models and thus strives for a different critical examination of the human body.

Known installations

Installation in Amsterdam, recorded in 2007
  • 1999: Vienna in the city ​​center .
  • 2001: Melbourne at the Royal Botanic Gardens .
  • 2002: São Paulo during the São Paulo Biennale .
  • 2002: Neuchâtel during the Swiss national exhibition Expo.02 .
  • 2003: London in front of the Saatchi Gallery .
  • June 2003: Barcelona , where he staged 7,000 Spaniards in front of the Institut de Cultural .
  • June 26, 2004: Cleveland , with 2,754 attendees.
  • May 8, 2005: Bruges as part of the Corpus 05 cultural festival , when he photographed 1,249 men and 701 women standing naked in a row on the historic market square in storms and freezing temperatures .
  • September 11, 2005: in the inland port of Lyon , with around 1,500 participants.
  • September 11, 2006: Simón Bolívar's Statue of Liberty in Caracas , Venezuela with around 1,500 participants.
  • April 22nd, 2006: San Sebastián , where he first had 1,200 people pose naked in the Kurpalast and then on the beach
  • August 6, 2006: Düsseldorf , where he composed three installations from approx. 840 naked people in the courtyard in front of the front of the Museum Kunstpalast , as well as in front of the NRW Forum and in the neighboring park. A fourth installation with 50 people was made in the Rubens Hall of the Museum Kunstpalast.
  • May 6, 2007: Mexico City , where he gathered around 18,000 people for a photo shoot in the Zócalo (the central square between the parliament building and the cathedral of the Mexican capital) and thus his own record of participation for such photos from the year 2003 exceeded.
  • June 3, 2007: Amsterdam , at four locations in the city center (including a multi-storey car park) with approx. 2,000 participants.
  • August 18 and 19, 2007: on the edge and on the Aletsch Glacier with around 600 participants as an action with Greenpeace Switzerland against global warming .
  • May 11, 2008: Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna with around 1,800 people.
  • June 17th, 2008: in Blarney Castle near Cork with over 1,000 participants.
  • June 21, 2008: in Dublin .
Participants prepare in front of the Sydney Opera House.
  • March 1, 2010: in Sydney in front of the Sydney Opera House with around 5,200 participants.
  • September 2011 “Naked Sea”, a photographic action with 1200 volunteers on the shores of the Dead Sea in Israel to draw attention to the danger of the lake drying up.
  • 23/24 June 2012: Tunick staged an interpretation of Wagner's " Ring des Nibelungen " including Götterdämmerung in Munich . For the 1,700 participants on June 23, Tunick used body colors in red or gold. on June 24th for a small group of about 70 participants blue or gold.
  • July 9, 2016: "Sea of ​​Hull" in Kingston upon Hull with 3,200 naked participants, painted in four shades of blue, with reference to the rise in sea level.
  • March 30, 2019 in Valencia

Web links

Commons : Spencer Tunick  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bayerischer Rundfunk: Spencer Tunick in Munich - 1,700 people tremble in red and gold ( memento from June 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) , June 25, 2012
  2. ↑ Burkhard Müller-Ullrich: Der Anti-Christo - Taking off for Wagner , Deutschlandfunk, June 23, 2012
  3. ↑ Various projects with pictures
  4. ↑ Hotel Blow Up Hall 5050: Art and Luxury in Poland | FrontRowSociety - The Magazine . In: FrontRowSociety - The Magazine . May 1, 2018 ( frontrowsociety.net [accessed August 16, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Video (2:11 min) about Tunick's preparations for the installation of a human pyramid on the central fountain in the Ehrenhof in Düsseldorf , posted by Ralph Goertz (Institute for Art Documentation and Scenography) on August 20, 2009 in the Vimeo video portal , accessed on August 20, 2009 December 2011
  6. ^ Sydney Morning Herald I was a model for Spencer Tunick
  7. ↑ 1,200 people in a nude photo session at the Dead Sea www.orf.at
  8. ^ Spencer Tunick at the opera: Naked in Munich www.sueddeutsche.de June 23, 2012, with 14 photos
  9. ^ Secret continuation of Tunick photo shoot: Naked and blue on Flaucher www.sueddeutsche.de June 24, 2012
  10. ↑ Frances Perraudin: Thousands strip naked in Hull for Spencer Tunick photographs hrsg = theguardian.com. July 9, 2016, accessed July 10, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Tunick, Spencer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Middletown , New York