Spencer Tunick brings nude shoot back to fading Dead Sea
American photographer enlists 15 Israeli activists to pose inside ever-proliferating sinkholes in bid to draw attention to decaying salt lake
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Five years after bringing his trademark mass-nudity projects to Israel, American photographer Spencer Tunick returned to the Dead Sea this week to push an environmental message.
The 2011 photoshoot, attended by over 1,000 Israelis, was intended to raise awareness to the state of the sea’s shrinking shores, and the harmful impact this was having on the surrounding environment.
But Tunick told Channel 2 News on Monday that things had only gotten worse since then.
“Five years ago the situation was not as bad as it is now with the Dead Sea, he said.
In a bid to draw renewed attention to the problem, the artist once again organized a nude photoshoot on the shores of Earth’s lowest lake early Sunday morning, though this time he only invited 15 activists to take part.
“We wanted it to be a secret so we wouldn’t be stopped,” he said, explaining the limited scope of the 2016 project.
Tunick said that, unlike the 2011 shoot, Israeli authorities were not keen on his new initiative.
“They don’t want anyone to know — especially [since] it would hurt the tourism business — that access to the northern Dead Sea is very dangerous right now and sinkholes are getting worse.”
The sinkhole phenomenon has been growing at an alarming rate in recent years with thousands of cavities appearing around the salt lake shared by Israel and Jordan, as the sea continues to shrink in size due to large-scale evaporation and environmental degradation.
Sinkhole formation is directly related to the dropping sea levels. Receding water leaves behind salt clusters. When these are flushed away by groundwater flowing from surrounding mountains, the earth is left with hollow patches which can crumble and collapse without warning.
Tunick said he was himself surprised by the scale of the problem, noting that one such hole “was half the size of a basketball court.”
He praised the activists who took part in the project, who “wanted not only to get naked but send a message out and make some beautiful artwork.”
The Times of Israel Community.