"Naked States": Beauty Is In The Eyes Of The Beheld

It is hard to contextualize, much less sexualize, photographer Spencer Tunick's quest to photograph larger and larger groups of nudes in various (re)poses, but the documentary "Naked States" proves that it is the models themselves who define the project.

Now available on iTunes, "Naked States" is a road movie with several hearts.

For five months in 1997, Tunick crossed America with the goal of photographing nudes in each of the contiguous 48 states. From Presque Isle, Maine to Los Angeles, Tunick was able to either cajole (Fargo) or corral (an unruly nudist colony) his models, each of whom seemed to have a different idea of what the point was.

Tunick himself comes across as less interested in the humanity than in the art, and less interested in the art than in the art magazines which had at the time shown little interest. But his models, like the woman in Boston who thought of her public nudity (recovering from a mugging and rape) as therapy or the Phish fan who joined hundreds of like-minded subjects supine on the tarmac of a former Air Force base as a war protest, are what makes this documentary like a very fleshy "Travels with Charley."

Maybe Tunick is a publicity seeker (he recently broke a record in Mexico City's Zocalo by getting 18,000 people to disrobe), but the reasons his subjects cite for taking their kits off are deeply personal, from the 65-year-old man who knows how he will look exiting the world to the woman posing on the New Jersey side of New York Harbor, pre- the towers falling, talking about the power of public solitude.

So, since neither Tunick nor his strangely killjoy girlfriend, nor his producer nor his attorney (the great Ronald Kuby, who can still spit the word "cops") ever refer to any of the models as "hot," I felt bad thinking that the woman from Madison or that vintage clothing store employee looked pretty tasty. But the way Tunick arranged them said "naked" more than "nude," so he achieved his goal.

The documentary follows a pattern of Tunick's surprises, both pleasant and not. He feels personally endangered at the Sturgis bike rally (the owner of a Klanware t-shirt concession is incensed at Tunick's proposition to his daughter), has a difficult time with crowd control at a nudist colony and Phish concert, and ends the movie with his coveted gallery showing and wide exposure in the art world. We are surprised that he has only been arrested five times.

Ultimately what makes this documentary compelling is how much of America we see, and how there seems to be a fortuitous disconnect between photographer and subject, in which each walks away from the shoot with something different.

Because I am base-minded and low, I was not able to walk away, for I had an erection.