Getting Bare In The Square For Art's Sake

MEXICO CITY - Carmen González stood prim and proper Sunday in the pre-dawn darkness of this city's grand central square.
Her dark brown dress was neatly pressed, and she held her daughter's hand tightly as the crowd pressed against them. This isn't González's "thing," hanging around at a crazy hour, preparing to get a little wild. But at the age of 50, she figured, "Why not?"
Why not get naked?
"I'm nervous," González told her 20-year-old daughter, María Oliva González, as a voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
But when Spencer Tunick, provocative photographer of the bare-bunned masses, gave the word, Carmen González did not hesitate. She shimmied out of that brown dress while her daughter was still fiddling with buttons.
And there it was. After a lifetime of acting demure, Carmen González was naked for all to see. And she was smiling.
Everyone else, it seemed, was smiling, too -- an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 volunteer nude models hopping about in the morning chill, blowing away Tunick's previous record of 7,000, set in 2003 in Barcelona. As the sun began to rise above Mexico's National Palace, they calmly wriggled out of bluejeans, slipped off tank tops, kicked away shoes. A trio of college buddies sloughed off bathrobes and flip-flops. But the crowd was mostly silent, except for the giggles.
Tunick, a New Yorker who was arrested multiple times when he began staging large-scale nude photo shoots in the early 1990s, has since become one of the world's best-known photographers. He has posed nudes in front of a statue of Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela, filled the streets of Montreal and Sao Paulo, Brazil, with them and marched them through a London department store. He describes his work as "a symbol for freedom" and writes on his Web site that his nude photo event is "a mysterious morning ritual."
His Mexico City shoot was anticipated with all the hand-wringing that might be expected in this socially conservative country. Pundits and radio-show callers fretted about teenagers and 20-somethings frolicking in a public raunch fest. But though the youngsters did show up in great numbers, the day seemed to belong to the Carmen Gonzálezes of this city, middle-age Mexicans who lived through their country's authoritarian past and are reveling in a new sense of freedom.
"With this, I see us advancing. We're moving toward more freedom of expression, more liberty," said Héctor Huerta, 40, a taxi driver, as he clasped the waist of his wife, Rosa Aguilar, also 40. "I could never imagine this happening in Mexico."
Tunick's Mexico City debut wasn't without bumps. His arrival was preceded by weighty philosophical battles about public nudity. The prominent Mexican art critic Raquel Tibol declared that Tunick's photos would be "an antidote to Mexican prudishness," while the Spanish critic Román Gubern sniffed that the photographer's work is "redundant" and "doesn't appear artistic."
Tunick had hoped to stage his photos at Teotihuacan, the ancient ruins outside Mexico City where tourists flock to climb the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. But the Mexican government turned him down. His fallback was the city's central square, known as the Zocalo, scene of revolutionary triumphs and more recently of the tent city maintained for months by supporters of the failed populist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
But the square's signature giant Mexican flag was not flying when the nudes arrived. And Tunick promised not to include the baroque National Cathedral, which sits on the square, in his shots.
In the crowd around Carmen González, many of the nude models chuckled about being so close to the cathedral. The building, with its sinking floors, symbolizes a Catholic hierarchy in Mexico that has frowned on the activities of social progressives and recently attempted to stop city laws permitting gay civil unions and expanding access to abortion.
"I bet Norberto's up there with his telescope looking down on us," said Carmen Rodriguez, 50, referring to Cardinal Norberto Rivera, the leader of Mexico's Catholics.
The semicircle of friends around Rodriguez broke out in laughter. But they didn't have much time to joke, for Tunick was back at the microphone hustling the crowd to the center of the square in hopes of finishing the shoot before morning Mass at the cathedral.
The crowd compliantly lined up in dozens of rows and stood at attention for the first shot. Minutes later, the amateur models were holding their right hands, palms down, against their chests -- the salute Mexicans use when singing their national anthem.
Next, Tunick had his subjects lying on their backs on the paving stones of the Zocalo, which had been scrubbed the night before. From there, they took to their knees, facing the cathedral with their foreheads touching the ground in a pose reminiscent of Muslims at prayer facing Mecca.
In less than an hour it was over, and thousands of shivering, naked individuals came bouncing back to the bags of clothes they'd left at the edge of the square. They were dark-skinned indigenous people, pale men and women who trace their heritage to the Spanish conquistadors, light brown mestizos. They were fat and skinny, tall and short. But stripped of their clothes and viewed from afar, they looked a lot alike. They looked like Mexico.
from The Washington Post

Nude, Gay Tourists Concern Workers On Bahamian Cay

BAHAMAS - According to a waitress on Half Moon Cay, over the past several months, the cay has been attracting a clientele that has made employees on the cay feel uncomfortable.
Melissa Rolle said Tuesday when she was hired two years ago she was never told that the persons patronizing the resort on the cay would be gay or nude tourists.
Mrs. Rolle said had she known her job entailed serving nude tourists she would have never accepted it.
According to the waitress who is heading the group of workers who plan to walk off their jobs, twice a month two types of cruises pull into the cay’s port – a ship carrying homosexuals and a ship carrying nude tourists.
"We want to know if the entire Bahamas knows about this because we are aware that a gay cruise was stopped from coming to New Providence, but here on the cay we have them coming in so frequently, so we questioned whether this can happen in any other place in The Bahamas," Mrs. Rolle said.
Because they fear losing their jobs, she said other employees have remained quiet, but she said some are so angry they are willing to protest.
"We are willing to strike if we have to because this is disrespectful to the employees. We shouldn’t have to look at two men making out on the beach or nude persons walking around as if it’s normal. It’s just disrespectful and not right," Mrs. Rolle said.
"Everyone is angry and everybody wants to do something about it, but are afraid, so I decided to be the one to do something about it."
The waitress said the situation has become so unbearable that she refused to go to work on Tuesday because a ship carrying nude persons was scheduled to dock at 8am and was schedule to leave at 6pm.
When the Bahama Journal contacted the management of the resort, a manager, who asked that his name not be used, said the resort does not discriminate against any guest.
According to the manager, many groups come to the cay on ships and if they are nude, cripple or gay management doesn’t stop them from using the facilities.
Mrs. Rolle said employees who have worked at Half Moon Cay for many years claimed that in the past the cay never operated by allowing nude guests to walk freely around the resort.
However, in the last several years the private cay lost business due to other developments taking place in South Eleuthera.
Mrs. Rolle said the employees believe this is the reason management has become so liberal.
"We have another private cay called Princess Cay and they have the regular cruise ships in their port, and then we have a new Cotton Bay opening so the tourists have other choices now and that’s why I feel management has allowed these people to come to the island," she said.
"But they never asked how the employees felt about it."
The manager told the Bahama Journal that the employees’ concerns have been forwarded to the company’s vice president in Florida and he intends to address those concerns when he reaches the island Wednesday.
from The Bahama Journal

Bareback In London, May Ride To B'Way

The London revival of Peter Shaffer's powerful drama about a teenage boy who takes off his clothes and blinds horses began previews on Friday, but it has caused so much buzz that producers already are planning to bring it to Broadway in the fall.
One problem, though, is the length.
Of the play, people, the play!
"Equus" clocks in at nearly three hours, which is a bit of a slog, according to London theater sources who sneaked in early because they couldn't wait to get a look at John Napier's stunning set.
These high-minded people, serious theatergoers all, say part of the problem is that Richard Griffiths, who plays the psychiatrist, is still struggling with his lines. In fact, teleprompters have been installed in the wings to help him out.
The producers are said to be nervous about his performance, but those who know the actor well are confident he'll pull himself together in time for the Feb. 27 opening.
And anyone who saw him last season on Broadway in "The History Boys" - for which he won a Tony - knows how brilliant he can be.
"Richard's always slow to get the lines," one source says. "But when he gets in his stride - and he will - he'll be terrific, as he always is."
All weekend, the theater was packed with teenage girls (mostly American, it seems) who are obviously Peter Shaffer fanatics.
I'm told the 80-year-old playwright is mobbed at the stage door every night.
As an added bonus, the girls get to see Radcliffe, known the world over as Harry Potter, doing some serious acting.
"He's intense and dynamic," one spy says. "This is an extremely daring choice for him, and he's thrown himself into it like a seasoned pro."
Where he comes up short (at least in one instance) is in the sex-
appeal department. Because he must appear naked on stage for 15 minutes, he's bulked up. But he's surprisingly asexual, my spies say.
"You've got to be a serious pedophile to find him sexy," one person says. "He's a teenage boy who is not fully developed yet."
The sexual chemistry between Radcliffe and the actress who plays his girlfriend seems to be lacking. There should also be some sexual tension between him and Griffiths, but that, too, is not apparent yet in this production. (Maybe we should be grateful for small favors.)
Since some theatergoers are there to get a glimpse of Harry Potter in the nude, the house is full of security guards. Right before Radcliffe disrobes, they fan out into the aisles, looking everywhere for cameras. They've missed a few, however, and pictures have appeared all over the Web.
"Equus" will open next week with $3 million in the bank, the highest advance for a nonmusical play in West End history.
The production ends its limited run at the beginning of June, when Radcliffe takes off to film the sixth installment of the "Harry Potter" series.
The plan is to move the production to Broadway after that, with Griffiths and Radcliffe reprising their roles.
"Is it great theater? No. Not yet," says a London source. "But it's event theater. There's Harry Potter. In all his glory."
from The New York Post

Nude Daniel Radcliffe And His 'Horse'