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500 bare it all for South Beach photos

by mpress | October 8, 2007 at 12:33 pm

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Typically, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Miami Beach is the word NAKED. And
that’s because you often see nearly-naked people prancing up and down
the beach and along the restaurants and bars on Ocean Avenue.

Also have you ever gone to a nightclub in Miami when the
heat and humidity have combined for an average temperature of 90
degrees?

So it’s perfectly fitting that artist Spencer Tunick's art installation–”elaborately posed still and video images of multiple nude figures in public settings” was taken at the Sagamore Hotel in South Beach.

The first group of bare volunteers crowded 15 of the hotel’s balconies that face east. When Tunick, perched with his cameras on a cherry picker, gave the word over a bullhorn, they all dropped their clothes. Tunick, who has shot naked mobs all over the world, wanted them in their birthday suits, no jewelry, no glasses, no nothing.

The subjects made a valiant effort to look straight ahead. Never down Never to their sides. They got to know their neighbors’ faces pretty well.

Then came the second shot: more than 100 women on more than 100 hot pink rafts floating wall to wall in the Sagamore’s pool. Until the water disappeared and the pool surface was just neat rows of flesh and pink plastic. Then more than 100 guys went in the water on green rafts.

Kimane McKenzie, a 24-year-old website designer from Fort Lauderdale, was stressing when he showed up the hotel.

”I’m very nervous right now,” he said, voice shaky. “But I’ve been bungee jumping, and I know the feeling. You hope for the best, and when it’s over, you feel great. I do it for the thrill seeking I guess.”

Tunick, whose images can fetch between $30,000 and $50,000, planned to shoot through most of the day and end the installation with a thank-you barbecue for participants. But he’ll ask them to party topless. And he’ll keep on shooting.

His Sagamore images will be unveiled in December during an Art Basel brunch at the hotel.

Source: MH