After completing his nude photo shoot at New7Wonders of Nature Finalist the Dead Sea last month, artist Spencer Tunick has published the first image of the installation. During the shoot, in which 1,200 people took off their clothes, Tunick stressed that he wanted to draw international attention to the fact that the Dead Sea was drying up. Tunick has set up a website, www.nakedsea.info, where he encourage visitors to vote for the Dead Sea.
A group of 1,000 people took part in the mass nude shoot at the Dead Sea. The volunteers, consisting of both men and women ages 18 to 77, gathered on the beach after midnight, awaiting the photo session to begin at sunrise. When the sun came up, Tunick instructed them to enter the salty water and then photographed them floating.
Tunick said he believes Israel is the only country in the Middle East with the freedom for one of his trademark mass shoots of nude volunteers, but insisted that the Dead Sea shoot was not about challenging the region’s religious sensitivities or exploring the Middle East conflict. He said his aim is to deliver an environmental message highlighting the plight of the world’s lowest and saltiest body of water, which is rapidly drying up. “Hopefully my work with this will be associated with the human-made natural disaster at hand, and not with war,” he said.
