“In public space, the naked body is still explosive:” How photographer Spencer Tunick won and lost the fight to work on New York’s streets

Authors

  • Nausikaä El-Mecky Heidelberg University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2018.i11.336

Keywords:

Photography, Spencer Tunick

Abstract

This article examines renowned yet controversial American photographer Spencer Tunick, whose work has led to numerous arrests, a high profile court-case and finally, success abroad. Spencer Tunick’s photographic works, which he calls installations, have brought him great renown, but his work was and continues to be hazardous, exposing the unstable rules about art and nudity in public space. Masses of naked bodies populate his works, standing up, lying down, painted blue, lifted up, holding hands, in public spaces all over the world. Tunick is not interested in sexualised imagery: the boundaries he wants to push against are political. Ironically, it was his high-profile court-case win in 2000 to photograph a group of nude persons outdoors in New York that led to increased censorship, and  –more fortuitously– to international success. Using archival records, interviews (by the author) with Tunick and reflections on the interactions between photography, the law, morality and public space, this article delves into the New York quality of Tunick’s work, which is both timelessly aesthetic and highly topical and political.

References

Associated Press. “Did Giuliani Really Clean Up Times Square?” CBS News, 28 December 2007. www.cbsnews.com/news/did-giuliani-really-clean-up-times-square/. Last visited March 29, 2018.

Curriden, Mark. “But Is It Art? How Sexually Explicit Can an Artist Be and Not Violate the Law?” The Barrister Magazine 17.13 (1990/91): 13-15 and 35-35.

Dewan, Shaila. “Live! Nude! Legal! Artist Gets His Naked Photograph.” The New York Times, 5 June 2000. www.nytimes.com/2000/06/05/nyregion/live-nude-legal-artist-gets-his-naked-photograph.html. Last visited April 9, 2018.

Eck, Beth A. “Nudity and Framing: Classifying Art, Pornography, Information, and Ambiguity.” Sociological Forum 16.4 (2001): 603-632.

El-Mecky, Nausikaä. “Interview with Spencer Tunick.” March 2018a.

El-Mecky, Nausikaä. “Interview with Ronald Kuby.” March 2018b.

El-Mecky, Nausikaä. “Interview with Spencer Tunick.” April 2017.

Greenberg, Miriam. Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Harcourt, Bernard. Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Window Policing. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Kramer, Ronald. “Moral Panics and Urban Growth Machines: Official Reactions to Graffiti in New York City, 1990–2005.” Qualitative Sociology 33.3 (2010): 297-311. link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11133-010-9154-0. Last visited March 29, 2018.

Levitt, Steven. “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain the Decline and Six that Do Not.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 18.1 (2004): 163-190.

McLeod, Douglas M. and Jill A. MacKenzie. “Print Media and Public Reaction to the Controversy Over NEA Funding for Robert Mapplethorpe’s ‘The Perfect Moment’ Exhibit.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quaterly 75.2 (1998): 278-291.

Papayanis, Marilyn Adler. “Sex and the Revanchist City: Zoning out Pornography in New York.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18.3 (2000): 341-353.

PRESS PASS Q. A Newsletter for the Gay and Lesbian Press Professionals. 6.2 (May 2004). www.presspassq.com/detail.cfm?id=36. Last visited April 15, 2018.

Shek, Tristan R. “Obscenity Laws and Art Exhibitions. ” Art Antiquity and Law 7.4 (2002): 349-370.

Strub, Sean. “Farewell, Florent.” POZ Magazine, 25 June 2008. www.poz.com/article/florent-closing-hiv-14835-3945. Last visited April 15, 2018.

Supreme Court of the United States. Barnes v. Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U.S. 560 (1991), No. 90-26, 501 U.S. 560, supreme.justia.com (Court Document).

Supreme Court of the United States. Office of the Clerk. Washington, DC 20543–0001, 1-3 June 2000.

The People of the State of New York against Spencer Tunick. Michael Weiner [sic], Criminal Court of the City of New York. County of New York. Misdemeanor, Police Department 950119105516, January 19, 1995 (Court Document).

The People of the State of New York against Spencer Tunick. Criminal Court of the City of New York. County of New York. Misdemeanor, Deponent 990425153131, April 25, 1999 (Court Document).

“The POZ Decade-Bare Witness.” POZ Magazine, 1 May 2004. www.poz.com/article/The-POZ-Decade-Bare-Witness-273-5835.

White, Edmund. “Why Can’t We Stop Talking About New York in the Late 1970s?” The New York Times, 25 September 2015. www.nytimes.com/2015/09/10/t-magazine/1970s-new-york-history.html. Last visited March 29, 2018.

Downloads

Published

2018-06-01