So Michaelangelo's nudes are art but Spencer Tunick's aren't? Tunick's been doing this work with nudes for decades, all over the world. He hands out fliers inviting people to participate at a particular time and place. He always gets a great turnout. They undress and position themselves very quickly, he takes the photos, and they disband. Sometimes he just walks up to ordinary people in the street and asks them if they'd pose nude. I'm hardly an exhibitionist, but I'd do it. I love his work.
Yeah, me too!
I was all ready to go down to Melbourne for a morning crowd photo shoot a couple of years ago when Tunick was in town, but when the morning came it was just too damn cold and i just crawled further underneath the doona instead. I saw the photos afterward, how well they turned out and felt a real pang of regret that i hadn't been more stoic. I don't actually see his photos as exhibitionism, more an affirmation of our shared humanity. After all, we all come naked into the world - notions of innocence or shame, sameness and difference come later.
As for the perils of climate change, i would like to believe that the majority of indipendent scientists that work in this field are wrong, i really would. But somehow i doubt it. Interestingly enough, there was a news item on the telly today showing how cartographers are currently having to redraw the world's maps to reflect the damage we have done already thru irrigation and the like. For instance, the Aral sea (Between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) is now just a series of interconnected lakes, and has lost 75% of it's water since 1960. In China, the Yellow River no longer has the flows to regularly reach the coast. And here in Australia, the health of the mighty Murray River was recently described by a farmer as "so bad, if it was a dog i'd shoot it".
Worrying trends... even if there is a only a 5% chance of the worst case scenarios of climate change taking place, don't we owe it to our kids to do everything in our power to prevent that from happening? Sackcloth and ashes will do nothing, investing in alternative energy sources, eating locally grown foods where possible, reducing consumption, lobbying our reps for action such as binding emissions targets and a carbon tax, sustainable building codes etc etc, are practical steps we can all take. Who knows? You could even save money on yr power bill!
Sorry if i've ranted on a bit, but i really do think there is a pressing need to act on climate change ASAP.
