I Got Naked For Art
Sagamore Hotel 17th & Collins, South Beach. – 2007
I have always had a keen appreciation for art in all of its forms whether paintings, drawings, photographs, music and even live events.
My own artistic passion was always photography. (though I never thought I’d myself be posing nude… I’ll get to that).
As a child my parents had me attend Saturday morning classes at the Miami Museum of Science. The other kids were much older with advanced cameras. SLRs from Nikon, Minolta and Canon.
I had a Kodak Instamatic.
& that was perfect for my purposes!
However, the tool does not make the artist.
My photographs were favorably compared with those taken with much more expensive and advanced cameras by our instructor. Over the years, one photographer I met was doing even more interesting work by organizing large groups of people to photograph them in interesting places and…
in the nude.
Spencer Tunick.
I befriended him at Art Basel Miami in the early 2000s. He had a vision for photographs of large numbers in people in the nude.
Why this matters has to do with developing a handicap, believe it or not.
In 2006, after many years of discomfort, I had hernia surgery that included insertion of a mesh. That mesh would later be RECALLED by the manufacturer. I had an additional 4 surgeries over the next few years and yet still have parts of the mesh in my body.
Very complicated situation.
It occurred to me in 2007, after my second hernia surgery, that life does not stop. One way to capture the moment, as I learned as a child, was to participate in a Spencer Tunick project at the Sagamore Hotel on 17th and Collins Avenue in South Beach.
My body had these surgical scars that felt like wounds from battle.
They still do.
I immediately reached out to Spencer and his assistant about participating in the event. The coordination by email and web pages. The interactions leading to the actual day of the event, sometime around Columbus Day 2007, looked piecemeal to me; but, actually highlighted the nature of the effort.
Getting people out of their comfort zones to “Go Naked for Art”.
It was a blast! Arrived early in the morning. Got sorted by the assistants and Spencer. Assigned to one of several works he had planned. I got the men’s green raft shot and the champagne “money shot” at the end of the shoot. I met so many folks from around the world who were participating in multiple Spencer Tunick shoots. The lack of embarrassment or ease at which people casually got nude for the day’s shooting felt more surreal then and real in retrospect.
I took a risk.
I touched grass.
I got naked for art.
Our appearances are fleeting but human. The reward was immense, free to be me. The number of news organizations that shot pictures from nearby locations was fascinating. Many were displayed during an Art Basel Miami in 2008.
Truly a milestone, and a very special memory for me.