New York-based artist Spencer Tunick — famous for his massive nude photo shoots — is organizing a large-scale nude exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio during the week of the Republican National Convention.
Tunick plans to place 100 naked women on private property, where they will hold up mirrors to reflect the “concept of ‘Mother Nature’ into and onto the convention center,” where the Republican party will nominate its presidential nominee.
Tunick said he wants the project to “energize the city, to heat it up, and this ray of light bringing knowledge and helping maybe to tone down the rhetoric of hate and prejudice against women preceding the convention.”
The photographer further explains the concept of his latest photoshoot on his website:
“The photograph will involve 100 nude women holding large mirror discs, reflecting the knowledge and wisdom of progressive women and the concept of ‘Mother Nature’ into and onto the convention center, cityscape and horizon of Cleveland. The philosophy of the artwork relates to the idea of the sacred feminine. By holding mirrors, we hope to suggest that women are a reflection and embodiment of nature, the sun, the sky and the land. We want to express the belief that we will rely upon the strength, intuition and wisdom of progressive and enlightened women to find our place in nature and to regain the balance within it. The mirrors communicate that we are a reflection of ourselves, each other, and of, the world that surrounds us. The woman becomes the future and the future becomes the woman.”
The 49-year-old photographer is asking interested women to submit a photo and personal information to his website — a forum that features fully nude men and women.
Tunick has been traveling the world and taking photos of nude people people since the early 1990s. In 2004, he photographed 2,754 people in Cleveland on East 9th Street, near the lakefront.
“I never really do protest work. And I thought maybe I don’t want Cleveland to be a protest work,” Tunick told the Clevland Scene. “Maybe I want it to be a work that women can be part of, maybe to heighten the idea that women will decide the outcome of this election and will have a more powerful presence in the future of politics, the future of the country, and the future of the world. It’s not so much a protest but an action, a wake-up call to the absurdity of politics and discrimination.”
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson
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