This morning I woke up earlier than I would have liked. It was one of those mornings when you’re still too tired to get up and do anything but you’re not quite tired enough to actually go back to sleep. I tried reading for awhile (am almost done with The Knitting Circle) but decided that wasn’t feeling right so I switched over to watching a documentary on Netflix instead. The documentary was called Naked States and was about the work of a photographer named Spencer Tunick. Thought-provoking little piece of art.

Tunick had a goal of going around the country and taking photographs of nude people in public spaces in ever single state in the continental United States. He didn’t seem to set any specific goals about how many people would show up to be photographed or where specifically he wanted to capture his images. Some of the things he did seem to establish as goals or parameters for himself included:

• The nudity would be total nudity and wouldn’t include things like shoes, jewelry or hats in the images.
• He would get the people for each shoot by going around the area when he arrived and asking people to participate.
• The shots would be done early in the morning in public spaces. Some of these would be famous spaces (like the Boston Public Library) but many would be random, urban, industrial spots that he found. He didn’t want to do “pretty” shots or a lot of nature shots.
• The images would provide a lot of contrast in them. He poses large people with small people, black with white, etc.
• At some point he did seem to want to get a lot of people involved. He achieved this when he shot at a Phish concert and had more than 1000 naked people participate.

Naked States shows how an art project goes from an idea to a gallery show. It shows how you have to believe in your own artwork, go out there and create it, promote it while staying true to the vision of it and then eventually network it into a show. It shows how people who are helping you may get frustrated with you, bicker with you, doubt you. It shows, in other words, what it’s like to be a working artist today. It’s a cool flick. I’d Netflix it again.

Tags: art documentary, documentary, naked states, photography, public nudity, smartchick