It was, according to the organisers, a world record of huge artistic import. Seven thousand synchronised bottoms were pointed at the sky for what goes down in history as the most numerous nude photo shoot ever.
The bottoms were, mostly, Catalan. Gathered in a Barcelona avenue that runs past the city’s exhibition halls from a busy roundabout to an art museum, they belonged to volunteers following the instructions of American photographer Spencer Tunick.
Tunick, who has gathered thousands of nude people to pose for him in cities as far flung as Sao Paulo and Melbourne, said the Barcelona photographs, taken from the top of a large crane, were ”the greatest” he had ever taken.
Tunick has been arrested several times in the US for alleged lewd conduct and blocking pedestrian traffic. Yesterday he complained to Barcelona’s La Vanguardia newspaper that in the US ”a work of art is considered a crime. In my country I might be in jail by now”.
Not so in Barcelona, where public institutions enthusiastically backed his appeal for people to take their clothes off.
Tunick took three pictures of the naked crowd, one of them lying on their backs, another kneeling in a foetal position with their bottoms in the air and a third one of hugging couples.
Some participants said it was a symbolic act of freedom. Others explained that the mass nudity session proved ”the innocence of the naked human being”.
With the photos timed to be taken early in the morning, queues of volunteers started forming at 4am. Although the crowd was mostly made up of single men, families, some with babies, also appeared, as did people in wheelchairs and people with their limbs in plaster.
The photo shoot reportedly turned into an impromptu fiesta, with several naked Mexican waves and much frolicking and dancing in the local fountains.
The Red Cross reported that the only damage was to seven people who needed treatment for cuts on their feet. – Guardian Unlimited Â