/ARTS WEEKLY/PHOTOGRAPHY: Chileans Line up to Pose in Nude Landscape

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Jun 25 2002 (IPS) - An unexpectedly large number of men and women have signed up in Chile to pose as anonymous naked models for New York photographer Spencer Tunick, who is coming to Santiago this month to add another city to his already wide-ranging gallery of urban landscapes of nudes.

Chile’s Museum of Modern Art, which is organising the visit of the 35-year-old New York-based artist, has not revealed the number of people who signed up for the photo shoot by sending an e-mail to the following address: tunickchile@123.cl.

The date and location of the event have also been kept secret, and will only be revealed to the participants the day before the shoot.

However, it was leaked out that there are more than 600 people interested in posing, and that the shoot will take place on Jun 30. According to the rumour mill, the site could be the Dominica bridge, an old flagstone and iron structure over the Mapocho river, or the Parque Forestal or Plaza Italia, a park and city square located in the centre of Santiago.

His first shoot in South America was in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, in 2001.

And last April, Tunick rounded up 450 volunteers for a photograph of bodies lying limp on the ground next to the obelisk in Buenos Aires – an event that brought a welcome distraction from Argentina’s severe economic crisis.

But the number of people interested in participating in Chile has surpassed expectations, even exceeding the crowd in Argentina.

“If Buenos Aires was able to bring together 450 people, it would be more than satisfactory if 200 show up to have their photo taken in Santiago,” René Rojas, a Chilean photographer and promoter of nudist centres who is working with Tunick, said early this month.

The cautious expectations were due to the prudishness of Chilean society. But that seems to be changing, to judge from the growing number of public artistic events or protests that use the naked body as a tool.

“Baby Vamp”, the nickname of Lucía Flores Catrileo, a 17-year-old Chilean model, strolled around downtown Santiago this month defying unusually cold temperatures that hit the area just before the start of the southern hemisphere winter, sporting only black platform boots and a school satchel.

The young model was contracted by Luizo Vega, a visual artist and producer from Argentina who says such “performances” are artistic proposals that have nothing to do with pornography or lewdness.

But Pedro Sabat, the mayor of the Santiago district of Ñuñoa, and a member of the right-wing National Renovation Party, sees things differently. He brought legal action against Vega for “corruption of minors,” and even punched him on a local talk show.

Baby Vamp’s stroll triggered a battle in the courts. The National Service of Minors called for the judiciary to take a stance on the matter, a conservative attorney sued Vega on charges of “offense to morality”, and the Argentine producer, besides filing his own lawsuit against Sabat, sought a court injunction in defence of artistic freedom.

A delegation of artists and parliamentarians from the ruling centre-left coalition met with the Minister of the Secretariat General of the Government, Heraldo Muñoz, to express support for Vega’s project, which was also backed by youth groups.

The scandal revived the debate on the limits between art, pornography and marketing. Anthropologist Carmen Muñoz said events based on public nudity have more to do with social anthropology than with aesthetics or artistic creation.

The anthropological aspect is undoubtedly present in the landscape photographs of nudes that Tunick began to shoot in 1994 in New York. The biggest crowds that have shown up to lie down on the pavement for his shots were in Melbourne, Australia (4,500), and Montreal (2,000).

But unlike the artistic events involving naked individuals that have caused such a commotion in Chile, this time the nudity will take place in the context of a community event, in which common people, rather than professional models, will be the protagonists.

In a survey by the newspaper Las Ultimas Noticias, 40.8 percent of the male respondents over 18 who were consulted in Santiago said they would be willing to pose for one of Tunick’s events, compared to 25.6 percent of the women.

That is in line with the make-up of Tunick’s anonymous models, who are 60 percent men overall – a proportion that might be repeated in Chile, where women are inhibited due to the risk of being labelled “loose” if they agree to take their clothes off in public.

Graphic designer Maribel Urrea told the daily El Mercurio on Jun 19 that she had a hard time finding a female friend willing to accompany her in the “adventure” of posing for Tunick. Some of her friends refused the invitation on moral grounds, while others were embarassed to show their less than perfect figures, she said.

So far, those who have admitted that they signed up for the photo shoot and have explained why they did so are Urrea, sports journalist Marco Antonio Cumsille, contractor Esteban Sierra, bank clerk Carlos González, wardrobe designer Claudia Godoy and photographer Fernando Gómez.

“It will be a very rich community experience for those of us who will be there,” said Urrea, 30. “A special moment will be shared by strangers. I believe the vibes will be very good.”

Cumsille, 43, said Tunick’s project is “very interesting, especially in a society as repressive as ours. This experience, although it looks like a game, is a liberating experience.”

The Museum of Modern Art has kept the names of those who signed up in the strictest confidence. They will only be notified the day before, by e-mail, of the place and time of the photo shoot, which is expected to be held at dawn.

The same format has been followed in other countries where Tunick has staged his events. The aim is to minimise the number of voyeurs and other onlookers, who can distort the artistic objectives of the event, said the organisers.