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Spencer Tunick: ‘Licht aan, kleren uit’

Spencer Tunick (1967) recently exhibited with Public Interventions at Reflex Amsterdam gallery. The American visual artist enjoys worldwide fame for his colossal nude photography and human installations in urban and natural environments. MASTERS spoke to him during his very first gallery exhibition in the Netherlands.

You grew up in Middletown, a town in upstate New York. Tell us about your childhood.

"My mother put a lot of time, energy and love into me - I was a lucky boy. She had done the Parsons School of Art and introduced me to art. So she took me to museums and Broadway shows in New York City. That I eventually got into photography was because of the other branch in my family: my father was a professional photographer, just as his father and grandfather had been. He worked in hotels. There he took portraits of the guests in the lobby. He processed the photos into key chains, which he offered for sale to them the next day. During high school, I helped him in my free hours. When I started studying art at Emerson College in Boston, I also took photography classes there. I fell in love with the medium and enrolled in the Creative Practices Program at the renowned International Center of Photography in New York. There I discovered the photography of nude performances by performance artists like Yayoi Kusama and Carolee Schneemann. Those triggered something in me. During my training I didn't take a single photograph, I was just listening, absorbing all the knowledge like a sponge. The day I finished, in 1992, I knew exactly what I wanted. I had studied a lot of different photographers - Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Edward Shames, Dwayne Michaels, Sally Mann... I combined everything I liked about their photography and brought the body into it: with nude models I went out into the streets."

Although public nudity was not illegal, you were arrested several times.

"You had to apply for a permit. I did, but I didn't get it. The person behind the counter literally told me to just 'steal' locations, because he really wouldn't provide me with a permit. So I photographed my nude models early, before dawn, when the streets were empty. And then peek around the corner to see if there wasn't a police car passing by."

There was a good living to be made in fashion and advertising photography at that time. Did you have a business plan?

"With keychain photography for my father, I was able to make a living. He retired early and gave me one of his businesses. For a year I worked my ass off, earning enough to then sing it out for six months. During that time I devoted myself entirely to art photography."

1994 marked a turning point in your career. Tell.

"Until then, I had only done individual portraits. I had become quite famous at that: more and more people signed up to pose for me. I was running out of time to photograph everyone. Why not portrait them all at once, I asked myself. I called everyone who had signed up, fifty people in all, and said that I wanted to photograph them as a group. As a background, I had chosen the United Nations headquarters in New York. Twenty-eight people showed up. There, on that day, my photography evolved from individual portraits to complete installations. This was something new; I saw opportunities here and began handing out flyers. My then friend and current wife Kristen is a graphic designer and saw what I had designed. "Shall I just make the flyers from now on? She came up with a beautiful design. I handed out a thousand flyers, to which one hundred and fifty people responded positively. While experimenting, I developed my own style, where the street became my studio."

Is there a philosophy behind portraying groups of naked people?

"There is a search for energy behind it, an explosion of life. Naked individuals together transform into another form, a new organism. One hundred and fifty bodies become one, it is no longer about individual sex. Far removed from sexuality, these abstract forms make you look at nudity differently. The compositions depict genuine unity and diversity. It has nothing to do with pornography and everything to do with dignity."

What are the logistics of working with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of models for one photograph?

"In the early works, it was all very spontaneous. People gathered, I gave my instructions in fifteen minutes, and five minutes later the picture was taken. Sometimes I only clicked four, five times. I had to finish quickly because of the traffic. I like to shoot in the canyon of the urban setting: the street is my river and I am in the middle of it. Since I work with larger numbers of models, I have to have streets and squares blocked off. Spontaneously taking a picture with a thousand people in a crowded city is of course impossible. Once they are in place, I quickly scan the faces and posture - I have a good eye for that. Looking at detail within a mass."

As a photographer, you should always hold a higher position. How do you do that?

"Using a scissor elevator. It really goes insanely high. It's really crazy."

MASTERS Magazine

Curious about the rest of the visual artist's interview? In the spring edition of MASTERS, three entrepreneurs shed light on the future: Raymon Pouwels (GO Sharing), Merel van Helsdingen (Nxt Museum) and Tim van der Wiel (GoSpooky). According to the latter, ever-accelerating technological advances offer tremendous opportunities. "There has never been a better time to have a good idea. Technology is in your pocket!" Sports journalist Jaap de Groot outlines the contours of the new playing field of international sport after the resounding success of the World Cup in Qatar. And futurist Adjiedj Bakas also shines his light on the future. According to him, next year will be dominated by the search for the economy of happiness. "We are not only going to look at what makes us money, but what makes us happy," he says. Perhaps this edition contributes to that, with a look back at MASTERS EXPO, a road trip with the new Range Rover and interviews with equestrian Pope Jan Tops, Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner and chef Margot Janse.