Tag Archives: Spencer Tunick

Naked Selfies? Over 25? Why?

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I’m not remotely shy to having my photograph taken while nude in the right circumstances.

Spencer Tunick? Yes, I was there for his Amsterdam shoot, along with the cousin with whom I discovered naturism. That was my birthday present that year! 🙂 And what a wonderful birthday present it was.

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Yep! There I am, and I can pick out my cousin and our respective husbands immediately too. Where am I? In the photograph. Look!

So yes, I’ll have my naked photograph taken, in an Amsterdam car park, for Tunick, or on the beach when my husband snaps us on holiday. I’ll even allow my photograph to be taken by others…if the circumstances are right, i.e. a birthday party at someone’s apartment while we’re on holiday. They’re naturist, we’re naturist and I’m pretty confident these photos won’t end up on the net. If I have any doubts about the intentions of the photographer, someone I don’t knowe well, for example, I’ll throw on a sarong. After all, the photographer isn’t going to be able to say ‘but I wanted a photo of you naked‘. So snap away…it’s a nice sarong.

Maybe it’s because I’m naturist and used to being photographed nude on holiday that I don’t feel any need to take naked selfies, a phenomenon of the digital smartphone and social media age.

But many men and women do. It’s something we’ve regularly blogged on in the past, and in a sense I’m now rehashing old ground here.

I sort of get that the younger generation might want to do it at a time of developing self-awareness and sexuality. And innocence and foolishness too – who knows where the photos might turn up in the future? At a period where relationships can be fleeting, there’s no ensuring that these may be shared online by a current boyfriend/girlfriend or, worse, as an act of revenge porn when that relationship ends. Of course you got your ex-partners absolute guarantee that they’d deleted everything! Yes, their word is their bond!

What I don’t get so much is older people’s growing fascination with them and desire to take them. Why? They’re mature enough to work out the implications of doing such a self-portrait, surely?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with older people featuring in nude photography, of course. I quite like the idea of sitting in my chair, aged 80, wracked with arthritis and unable to get about much but being able to fondly reminisce on my younger, less wrinkled, more active naked self.

Of course, who knows, by that stage maybe every citizen of the world will be expected to turn up every couple of years to have a naked portrait taken of them in the interests of ‘state security’, with the globe’s entire population nude database online. Nudity normalised? We can look up our neighbours, friends, co-workers naked image online in ten seconds flat? Who knows?

Look at the following photos…

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All are of more mature ladies taken nude selfies. As I don’t know the history of how they’ve come to be on the net, the ladies themselves may not be aware they’re out there in cyberspace, I’ve opted to heavily blur the photographs to protect the ladies’ identities.

But it’s not just older ladies who are indulging in this…

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Why? Yes, I can see a bit of a case for it being ‘hey, I’m 35-45-55 and still in good shape, I look after myself, I’m attractive to the opposite sex.’ Maybe if I needed to diet I might consider before & after photos, to see where I was and where I am, but other than that…..no, I don’t get it.

Are these men and women in the photos sending them to other men and women? Is it part of some modern dating ritual to which I’m not party? Yeah, divorce rates are rising, so there’s going to be a lot of unattached but looking people out there. But is a photo of your penis or your boobs really the way that the dating/mating ritual is conducted now?

It’s seriously something about which I have no framework of experience, and I’m baffled. I’d be delighted to know if any of you take naked selfies and, if you’re more mature, if you’re sending these to potential suitors. Most importantly, I would love to know your motivations for doing so.

Ella

 

 

Naked Second Life

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The photographer Greg Friedler did a photographic project called Naked New York wherein ordinary people would pose clothed and nude for him, the photos only providing the person’s first name, profession and age.

Harry thought this was a great project, and had undertaken some photos a while ago with the intention of us replicating it. As is often the case with our projects, time and the need to cover other events catches up with us, and as a result the project never reaches fruition. So it was with Harry’s ‘Naked Second Life’ exhibition, and his current illness has stopped him from revisiting it.

In real life, Friedler’s project captured the imagination of many. We live in an age where posing naked for the camera, be it for Greg Friedler, Spencer Tunick or anyone else is not a big deal. Ordinary people like the idea of being part of some photographic art.jose nsl6_001c

I was looking through the photographic folders, and blog posts that only existed in draft form recently, and came across Harry’s (unpublished) post for the project, along with some dressed/undressed shots he’d taken of SL’s residents.

It seemed silly to allow this to simply wither on the vine, so I asked our new photographer, Jose, to revive the project and follow Greg Friedler’s concept, one Friedler would repeat in Los Angeles, London and Las Vegas.

We found an enormous number of avatars, even those who weren’t remotely naturist within SL, were more than happy to oblige and shed their clothes, just as non-naturists would for the likes of Spencer Tunick or, indeed, Friedler.

You can go directly to the Issuu published book here, and you should also be able to  download it as a pdf file. Two notable omissions from it are Jose, the photographer, ‘because I wish to include myself in a second volume’ (although he’s featured in the photo above) and yours truly because ‘oh, I forgot to paste in your photographs Ella’. Thanks, Jose! Maybe I can make the second volume too.

 

 

Ella

Success!!!!

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After what seems like an eternity, I’ve been able to reclaim my alt, Spencer Cloakk, a thinly disguised alter-ego and homage to Spencer Tunick.

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My thanks to the lovely people at Linden Labs for allowing me to reclaim him (my account was blocked because I’d spelt my email address wrongly, in the first instance). But all is now well and good, and thus ‘Spencer’ (i.e. me) will utilise him on a semi-regular basis to re-enact, as best I can, some Tunick-like ‘installations’ in SL.

You won’t see these for at least a couple of weeks…organising an online presence of several willing models at once demands patience and planning..but expect something more of the same vein as we posted in December (below) soon.

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Harry

Tunick in England

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The BBC reports on a nude flash-mob in Hastings, Sussex (on England’s south coast) yesterday.

The intention is to attract Spencer Tunick to undertake a photo-shoot there later this year. The town is vying with Folkestone and Brighton for the right to stage the shoot, as part of a festival in May.

Apparently you can vote for your favourite location as part of a ‘competition’ of sorts for the right to stage the shoot.

You can only admire the (fool?) hardiness of people willing to strip off on a January afternoon. Right now, in the depths of winter, naturism would be the furtherest thing from my mind!

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But since they’ve made the effort, let’s support Hastings desire to stage the event. A town pretty much synonymous with the Battle of Hastings, in 1066, when William the Conqueror invaded England (the last time anyone did so) and brought Norman culture, castles and so on to England. It rather looks like the good people of Hastings are now preparing for another battle, of sorts. That battle ended with King Harold being killed with an arrow in his eye (how much of this could effectively be ‘Game of Thrones…the prequel?’).

Anyway…in other news, our mini winter break from blogging is over. There will be numerous posts in the coming week.

Ella.

 

 

Spencer Cloakk

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spencer & harry

 

When Spencer met Harry

Meet ‘my friend’ Spencer. 🙂

Look closely at the photo and you’ll see I didn’t actually ‘meet’ him, it’s a composite of two photos. And I can’t meet him because….I’m Spencer! And Harry!

Yep, after five years in SL I’ve added an ‘alt’.

Inspired by Ella’s ‘Spencer Tunick’ post yesterday I thought ‘what a great idea!’ (it’s why she’s editor, you know?) and then thought ‘there’s no time like the present’. So…I dreamed up ‘Spencer’. His surname is, quite obviously, a play on Tunick’s own surname, an outerwear garment with a ‘k’ added to the end.

So instead of ‘Tunick’, we have ‘Cloakk’.

And Cloakk has already been undertaking Tunick-styled shoots this morning. (We don’t let the grass grow under our feet here at SLN).

Everything else Ella said yesterday still applies, though. We’d like you to get thinking about ‘Spencer Cloakk’ type shoots, contribute your own, design your own, submit your own.

And while I don’t generally name the photostudios I use, I thought I should make an exception in this instance, as it does contain backdrops where you can pose five avatars in a similar position. I only had three willing friends online at the time I did the shoot, so there’s room for expansion.

You’ll find the free photo studios at Nataly Kara’s Lagoon. Please, please DO try and become involved in what will be an ongoing SLN project throughout 2014.

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Harry

Spencer Tunick

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You all know Spencer Tunick, yes? He’s famous for producing ‘human installations’ all over the world, featuring multiple nudes of ordinary, everyday people, all striking a similar pose. I think his work is fabulous!

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Anyway, Harry & Diane have been plotting that we, the naturists of SL, should consider a similar undertaking. Obviously ‘hundreds’ isn’t do-able (the lag would be horrendous), but we’re hoping to do something on a smaller scale in 2014. Maybe small groups, half a dozen or so, maybe 20-30…it depends on the lag…in 2014.

Now…we’d like to undertake this, or these, shoots in both naturist and non naturist sims. So if you’re a sim owner who might like to have some sort of Tunick styled event on your land…let us know. Similarly, if your a pose builder, and you’d like to design a (free) pose that you think would fit into the style of Tunick’s work, please get in touch. We’ll give that pose away in advance of the shoot, and you can give it away at your store and (hopefully) get some traffic feed-through as a result.

We’ll also be contacting photo studios to see if they would like to become involved in setting up some sort of backdrop that might aid the production of this work.

If you imagine we’re ‘thinking small’, you’d be right. Because (have I mentioned ‘lag’?) the lag will be the determining factor in all of this.

Anyway…Tunick started small; I remember one of the really early works was just three girls in Hong Kong or Tokyo or somewhere in the Far East. And this (below) is one of his more recent works, showing he can still ‘downsize’ where the geography -in this instance a foot bridge in Amsterdam- demands it.

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So we aren’t necessarily determined by huge numbers of participants.

Gallery owners, and other photographers too, we’d like to get involved. Our aim is to get photographs of the event, or even allow individuals to round up their own friends, take a pic, and submit it to a gallery ‘showing’, some time in 2014, so that we can hold a display of the pics that are submitted. And maybe all ‘for sale’? In aid of one of the charities favoured by SL (on this note, and from this distance, October 2014 looks like a good date, tied to various ‘pink ribbon’, breast cancer charities in ‘Breast Cancer month’.

Lots to think about…and this can’t be a ‘solo’, SLN on its own styled ‘event’. We need collaborators. So, please, get in touch with your ideas.

Ella