Best known for doing nude shoots on a massive scale, Spencer Tunick was born in 1967 in Orange County in New York in a Jewish family. Tunick did Bachelor of Arts in 1988 from Emerson College.
In 1992 at public locations of New York, he started documenting photographs and videos of live nudes. From this time onwards, his work comprised of mostly small groups or individual nudes. The turning point of his career was when he photographed himself and twenty eight other nude people in Manhattan in front of the building of United Nations. From here his work transcended from plain photography to photographic performances and installations. Since then he has been known for sixty five temporary installations at different sites. As his backgrounds he uses unusual and famous structures and buildings.
In Greenwich London, in 2001 he took pictures of 400 unclothed volunteers. Two years later, he photographed another bunch of nude people in London on the face of Saatchi Gallery but this time the number was lessened to 160 volunteers.
Then in 2004, he made an enormous installation, with 2,754 individuals posing, in the United States. In the same year, a photo shoot of around 1,800 nude people was completed in Buffalo.
A year later, he worked on nudes again. This time they were 1,700 in number at Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne. Two months later, he photographed 1,493 nude persons in Lyon. In the coming year, he took images of 1,500 naked people lying down, kneeled down and standing up in Caracas. In 2006, he took images of 500 naked persons in Düsseldorf at the Museum Kunstpalast’s courtyard.
He then was commissioned in 2007 by the Dream Amsterdam Foundation to organize art projects for Dream Amsterdam, an event. He staged installations in Schermerhorn and in Amsterdam.
He set a new record by photographing about 18,000 females and males posed in Zócalo, Mexico City in 2007. In the same year, on the Aletsch Glacier, Tunick shot images of 600 nudes in an effort to warn audience about global warming.
In 2008, with 1,200 persons, he created an installation in Blarney Castle’s grounds in County Cork. After a year with Greenpeace, Spencer Tunick collaborated and set one more installation in order to draw attention to the way in which the production of French wine is affecting the changes in climate. More than 700 people came at the vineyard as volunteers.
In 2010, he did a series of installations – The Base – on the Sydney Opera House and in the Opera House. It was the first installation on a huge level in Sydney with 5,200 contributors. Later in May, The Lowry commissioned Spencer Tunick to work in five covert sites with 1000 people. He did other projects as well this year at The Big Chill Festival in the United Kingdom and at the International Street Theatre Festival in France.
In 2011 he made an installation, using 1,200 participants ranging from 20 to 60 in age, at the Dead Sea. A year later, he photographed nudes in Munich in Germany at the exterior of the Bavarian State Opera house.
Three documentaries by HBO channel featured Spencer Tunick as their subject. The titles were Positively Naked, Naked World, and Naked States. In some of Tunick’s work there is a indication of obedience and regime in the way subjects are arranged.
