Five hundred nudes and one cock

Everyday People is Spencer Tunick’s latest art endeavour, commissioned by Salford’s The Lowry.*

The Lowry asked Tunick to merge his artistic style – photographing hundreds of nude people in public places – with LS Lowry’s own distinctive paintings.<o:p></o:p>

The result was two days photography, beginning at 3.30am, 500 people each time, eight locations in total and dozens of images and film of people with no clothes on facing the camera, not facing the camera and bending over.<o:p></o:p>

Impressed so far?  <o:p></o:p>

Well, you’ll be even more impressed when I tell you I was there as a naked participant on day two. But there are one or two issues which need ironing out about the Spencer Tunick gig.<o:p></o:p>

Firstly, making art is not all it’s cracked up to be.<o:p></o:p>

Spencer’s emails about the event and the attendance of the nude people insinuated that if you didn’t arrive at The Lowry a considerable time earlier that the 3.30am registration opening time you would not make the crucial first 500. In the event on Sunday, May 2, less than 300 turned up. A lot of people spent a lot of time queuing in darkness for no reason.<o:p></o:p>

Broken glass was not swept up at the Castlefield site prior to the naked invasion. At least one person required medical treatment after cutting his foot.<o:p></o:p>

None of the New Yorker’s flyers detailing the plans for the Lowry installation reached participants on the buses as planned. Emails with similar details were also not sent out. Cue, an embarrassing exchange between him and his staff.<o:p></o:p>

Then there were the bad journies. Several buses – including mine - were forced to take the long way round Manchester and perform a traffic-clogging reversal because their double-deckedness wouldn’t permit them to go under a low bridge.<o:p></o:p>

But second, and perhaps more importantly, is Spencer’s attitude. <o:p></o:p>

Rarely raising a smile, distant and disconnected, short of patience and stroppy. Was this a genius in action or a miserable git who struck lucky with a great idea?<o:p></o:p>

He gruffly barked orders to his dozen staff at the four venues – Castlefield, The Lowry, Concorde at Manchester Airport (with no discernable link to Lowry) and the gas cooling tower near Sport City. Some of his minions didn’t like it, some answered back.<o:p></o:p>

Best of all, he regularly megaphoned his 300-odd volunteers curt message to hurry with impressive impatience. This included a laughable dictum to hurry up despite us being shuffled around by right-hand man John and his staff on an acutely painful imitation cut-glass gravel surface. It was 10am on the final shoot of the morning. No-one was in the mood for his mannerless manner by now.<o:p></o:p>

‘Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me!’ he catchphrased repeatedly. It was as if someone was slowly twisting his testicles as he manically shouted. It was us whose googlies were being gripped by the frozen claws of a Manchester gale. <o:p></o:p>

Brutally, a man labelled ‘too tanned’ was ushered out of shot after John was told ‘Get him to the back, get him away.’<o:p></o:p>

‘Stop smiling. Stop smiling!’ he bellowed just as frequently. I’m very appreciative of work Spencer Tunick does and of the pressure he must have been under. But it was impossible to warm to him as he displayed deficiencies in both emotional intelligence and communication. He dismissed requests to be photographed by participants with contempt.<o:p></o:p>

While standing on the balcony inside The Lowry at 6.37am to inform us what would happen for that particular shoot, Spencer slipped mid-sentence into a vacant stare across to foyer. It was a seminal moment as 300 faces stared attentively upwards waiting patiently for the rest of his sentence. It never came. He wandered off.<o:p></o:p>

By the time he was halfway through a bonus set of images at 10.30am, consisting of every women from the shoot pressing their naked bodies against the windows of two double-decker buses, the male contingent had grown cynical. ‘Don’t look at me’, shouted one bystander as others laughed as Spencer meticulously arranged bodies by banging on windows and shouting down his megaphone.<o:p></o:p>

There’s little remarkable about Spencer and his ill-fitting saggy jeans or his tiny medium-format Pentax camera. But the effort he puts into his installations and the images he produces from them are remarkable. When I saw the images he did around Newcastle I was blown away. I wished I was in them. Now I am.<o:p></o:p>

I love the fact I took part in such a major piece of art creation. It was great to snapped rather than be the snapper. The pain - of getting up at 2am and from the biting cold – is long gone. And I would do it again, it’s great to feel part of such a unique art event. But why did I not feel liberated?

I drove home after eight hours in Manchester feeling a little lacking in something. Perhaps missing was the spark of excitement I should have got from standing next to 300 naked bodies.

Or perhaps what was lacking was a sliver of warmth and charm from Spencer himself, something to give the event a subtle twist of great. Sadly, the only twisting came not from the 300 freezing bodies but from the man himself.<o:p></o:p>

PICTURED: Spencer Tunick himself at the Sport City car park. No artists were harmed in the taking of this image.<o:p></o:p>

* Salford is near, but not in, Manchester

Five hundred nudes and one cock

Everyday People is Spencer Tunick’s latest art endeavour, commissioned by Salford’s The Lowry.*

The Lowry asked Tunick to merge his artistic style – photographing hundreds of nude people in public places – with LS Lowry’s own distinctive paintings.

The result was two days photography, beginning at 3.30am, 500 people each time, eight locations in total and dozens of images and film of people with no clothes on facing the camera, not facing the camera and bending over.

Impressed so far? 

Well, you’ll be even more impressed when I tell you I was there as a naked participant on day two. But there are one or two issues which need ironing out about the Spencer Tunick gig.

Firstly, making art is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Spencer’s emails about the event and the attendance of the nude people insinuated that if you didn’t arrive at The Lowry a considerable time earlier that the 3.30am registration opening time you would not make the crucial first 500. In the event on Sunday, May 2, less than 300 turned up. A lot of people spent a lot of time queuing in darkness for no reason.

Broken glass was not swept up at the Castlefield site prior to the naked invasion. At least one person required medical treatment after cutting his foot.

None of the New Yorker’s flyers detailing the plans for the Lowry installation reached participants on the buses as planned. Emails with similar details were also not sent out. Cue, an embarrassing exchange between him and his staff.

Then there were the bad journies. Several buses – including mine - were forced to take the long way round Manchester and perform a traffic-clogging reversal because their double-deckedness wouldn’t permit them to go under a low bridge.

But second, and perhaps more importantly, is Spencer’s attitude.

Rarely raising a smile, distant and disconnected, short of patience and stroppy. Was this a genius in action or a miserable git who struck lucky with a great idea?

He gruffly barked orders to his dozen staff at the four venues – Castlefield, The Lowry, Concorde at Manchester Airport (with no discernable link to Lowry) and the gas cooling tower near Sport City. Some of his minions didn’t like it, some answered back.

Best of all, he regularly megaphoned his 300-odd volunteers curt message to hurry with impressive impatience. This included a laughable dictum to hurry up despite us being shuffled around by right-hand man John and his staff on an acutely painful imitation cut-glass gravel surface. It was 10am on the final shoot of the morning. No-one was in the mood for his mannerless manner by now.

‘Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me!’ he catchphrased repeatedly. It was as if someone was slowly twisting his testicles as he manically shouted. It was us whose googlies were being gripped by the frozen claws of a Manchester gale.

Brutally, a man labelled ‘too tanned’ was ushered out of shot after John was told ‘Get him to the back, get him away.’

‘Stop smiling. Stop smiling!’ he bellowed just as frequently. I’m very appreciative of work Spencer Tunick does and of the pressure he must have been under. But it was impossible to warm to him as he displayed deficiencies in both emotional intelligence and communication. He dismissed requests to be photographed by participants with contempt.

While standing on the balcony inside The Lowry at 6.37am to inform us what would happen for that particular shoot, Spencer slipped mid-sentence into a vacant stare across to foyer. It was a seminal moment as 300 faces stared attentively upwards waiting patiently for the rest of his sentence. It never came. He wandered off.

By the time he was halfway through a bonus set of images at 10.30am, consisting of every women from the shoot pressing their naked bodies against the windows of two double-decker buses, the male contingent had grown cynical. ‘Don’t look at me’, shouted one bystander as others laughed as Spencer meticulously arranged bodies by banging on windows and shouting down his megaphone.

There’s little remarkable about Spencer and his ill-fitting saggy jeans or his tiny medium-format Pentax camera. But the effort he puts into his installations and the images he produces from them are remarkable. When I saw the images he did around Newcastle I was blown away. I wished I was in them. Now I am.

I love the fact I took part in such a major piece of art creation. It was great to snapped rather than be the snapper. The pain - of getting up at 2am and from the biting cold – is long gone. And I would do it again, it’s great to feel part of such a unique art event. But why did I not feel liberated?

I drove home after eight hours in Manchester feeling a little lacking in something. Perhaps missing was the spark of excitement I should have got from standing next to 300 naked bodies.

Or perhaps what was lacking was a sliver of warmth and charm from Spencer himself, something to give the event a subtle twist of great. Sadly, the only twisting came not from the 300 freezing bodies but from the man himself.

PICTURED: Spencer Tunick himself at the Sport City car park. No artists were harmed in the taking of this image.

* Salford is near, but not in, Manchester

6x9 cover - version one* (*And version two)

This is a first look at my latest book project, 6x9 (or 9x6 as it will probably end up).

The book will showcase six of my most recent photographic essays. The six projects have not yet been finalised, but you can see from the six cover images they are likely to include images from Christmas!, Bethlehem, Blackpool and India projects.

This cover is likely to change with the 9x6 font likely to become transparent white or silver and possibly with an outline. The Garry Cook's motif could also be chopped.

And, of course, I reserve the right to move and substitute the images you see here.

So, all in all, this is not what the cover of my new book will look like. Thanks for sticking with me on this one.

ADDITIONAL: Here is the white version.

Blackpool on a Saturday night

Images as brash as I could make them.

General Election campaign 2010

'I took billions from pension. Let me do it again.'
Conservative Party advert featuring Labour leader Gordon Brown.
General Election campaign April 2010.

St George's Day in Darwen, Lancashire

Did someone say the English don't know how to celebrate?
April 23, 2010.

Isle of Mull, Scotland

Boat trip: Approaching Staffa

Boring travel photo: Fingal’s Cave on Staffa

Iona: The hill that is called Dun I

Family snapshot: The beach next to Iona’s port.

All photographs April 2010

The image as reality

Truth can be manipulated be the image. You see it all the time. As easy as it is to document an event, a photograph can also misrepresent reality.

While photoshop post-production – cropping, cloning, cutting out – is the most obvious form of manipulation, there are huge ethical issues in what photographers show or do not show in an image.

These include whether the image maker presents a scene with exaggerated aesthetics (the dreamy beach paradise image which omits the six-storey apartment blocks) or if their desire to present the unusual neglects the mundane reality.

What I’m trying to say is that the photo which holds your gaze is not always a representation of the truth.

For every image you get to see in a newspaper, magazine, book or on the internet, there are hundreds from the same set which will never see the light of day.

I’ve had a couple of weeks off work. But being a photographer means you don’t put the camera down when you go on holiday.

On the Isle of Mull most of my camera clickety-clacking concentrated on my four-year-old son Teddy and his friend Seamus, also four.

And here’s the thing. Persuading them to pose for a photograph or capturing them running around enjoying themselves was satisfying – but these images are not entirely truthful.

The joy of capturing them in happy mode was too often matched by the despair of their whinging, bickering and general stress-inducing behaviour.

A week on the Isle of Mull with Anna and two kids was brilliant. But these images only tell half the story.

This video adds balance to the reality of the family holiday.*

http://www.youtube.com/v/PDRwvc0l9OQ&hl=en_GB&fs=1&
*NOTE: The sound on this video may cause discomfort to your ears.

Nec Sorte Nec Fato* AFC Rutherford

Promotional shots of AFC Rutherford’s junior sides, shot in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear (March 2010).

*Neither By Chance Nor Fate

<o:p></o:p>

Photography merchandise

This year I will begin my experimentation with photography merchandise by publishing a set of Christmas cards.

I’ve tried to produce a set of amusing images documenting what Christmas means to us here in Britain. I hope people will think the cards are unusual enough to buy.<o:p></o:p>

For a long time I’ve had an interest in how people look at photographs.<o:p></o:p>

There have been great changes in this area, most notably in the way family albums have been replaced by on-line collections viewed in solitude through a computer screen but by more people than would have been invited to sit next to the owner as they turned page after page of a hardbook archive.<o:p></o:p>

A great image has the power to captivate and inspire wonder but viewing an image as a photographic work is probably the least popular way we view photography.<o:p></o:p>

Images are consumed in newspapers (used to attract the eye and lead us to the text) or feature within the pages of magazines, primarily in adverts and on food packets and labels. But in these instances the image is not the primary reason it is being viewed.<o:p></o:p>

I’ve been fascinated to watch how my images and videos have attracted attention on the internet through sites like flickr, facebook, vimeo and YouTube. Videos are far more popular than images – they receive more hits and have the potential to register many more views. People will actively sit and watch videos but seeking out images apparently offers less of an attraction – or should that be distraction.<o:p></o:p>

That has lead some artists to experiment with their images and the way they are promoted. This can be by producing short videos of still images, often with sound or music. And it can lead to the merchandising of an image, where the object promotes the image (a photo mug) rather than the image promoting the object (a tin of beans).<o:p></o:p>

I intend to explore this theme through canvas prints, mugs plates and food over the coming months. I’ve been inspired by people like Takashi Murakami, a Japanese artist who has market his works in the form of everyday commercial goods.<o:p></o:p>

Murakmi was also involved in producing this pop music video for the Tate Modern's recent Pop Life exhibition. It features Kirsten Dunst miming to I think I'm Turning Japanese, The Vapors' 1980 hit.


Here it is:
http://static.ning.com/socialnetworkmain/widgets/video/flvplayer/flvplayer.swf?v=201004051300
Ache outros vídeos como este em universomovie