Naked and on the Rocks at Montauk Point
By Kate Maier

(June 22, 2009)    An estimated 300 people showed up to bare all in a Spencer Tunick art installation at Montauk Point State Park in the early hours of Monday morning, including a large contingent of New York City residents and a smattering of local participants.

David E. Rattray Spencer Tunick, left, scrambled up a rock revetment to photograph a women-only nude assemblage at at Montauk Point Monday morning, part of his Eternal Sunrise project that included as many as 300 people of both sexes.

    Since 1992, Mr. Tunick has made a name for himself by photographing large groups of naked people in recognizable places — at historic landmarks, places of natural wonder, and even in logistically challenging locations like Grand Central Station. In all of his work, Mr. Tunick aims to bend viewers’ perceptions of nudity and sexuality by transforming human bodies of various shapes and sizes into organic parts of a visual landscape.

    With only a few hundred volunteers recruited to populate the Montauk shoot and a handful of curious surfcasters as an audience, coordinating Monday’s effort was relatively simple in comparison to some of Mr. Tunick’s larger-scale productions, which could include thousands of models.

    Even still, the morning after a storm on a windy beach presented its own problems. Mr. Tunick spent most of the morning broadcasting directions to a small sea of bodies via megaphone, his voice occasionally drowned out by the swell of the ocean.

David E. Rattray As Monday dawned Spencer Tunick explained the morning's photo shoot to several hundred volunteer models who would soon drop their clothing and pose naked on the beach at Montauk Point.

    “Working on a beach in Montauk after a storm like that — it’s sort of like doing a shoot in the middle of Times Square,” Mr. Tunick said as participants donned bathrobes and towels and made their way back to the Backyard Restaurant at Solé East on Second House Road in Montauk, where an after-party with a heated pool and breakfast was scheduled.

    There were a few amiable state parks’ police making their rounds and a small number of spectators during the shoot. “I’m pretty relaxed,” the photographer admitted, “when there’s no police behind me looking to arrest me.”

    “It’s actually legal to do this,” he said, and added that Rudolph Giuliani apparently ignored the law when he had Mr. Tunick arrested for practicing his art on multiple occasions during his tenure as mayor of New York City.

Kate Maier Spencer Tunick and his assistants staged several different shots at Turtle Cove and were done by 7 a.m.

    In contrast to Mr. Tunick’s urban installations, curious onlookers were at a minimum in Montauk. Jeff Caputo, a surfcaster from Port Washington, said he was sleeping in his van in a parking lot at Montauk Point at around 2 a.m. when he started to notice some unusual stirrings around the point. He had no idea a massive nude photo shoot had been scheduled until confused participants began asking him for directions.

    “It was like an invasion in the middle of the night,” he said, adding that he “had no clue” where the shoot was to take place but suggested the participants check out Turtle Cove, where he had seen other photography shoots before. Mr. Caputo was right — most of the shoot took place at the popular surfing spot to the right of the Montauk Point Lighthouse.

    Ultimately avoiding the action, Mr. Caputo said that if the models were exclusively women, he would have stuck around to observe. “I’m looking at these people, guys too, and thinking, ‘I don’t know if I want to see them all naked,’ ” he said. “I actually wanted to fish the cove, and then I was like, ‘Nah, there’s some things I don’t need to be looking at,' ” he said.

    Steve Rodgers and his surfcasting buddies from North Shirley were more enthralled. “We stumbled upon a mountain of naked people, it was great,” he said. “It was totally unexpected,” and after spending two hours at the Lighthouse, Mr. Rodgers and his friends still hadn’t gotten around to dropping their lines in the water.

    “The worst part is we have News 12 down here, and we’re worried about the girls seeing us,” he said, implying that girlfriends and wives at home might be less than amused to find their significant others watching a naked parade instead of fishing.

Kate Maier Monday morning's mostly overcast conditions were ideal for making the photographs he had in mind, Spencer Tunick said.

    Logistically speaking, “it was difficult to do it in this area because the beach is so loud and the water is so cold,” said Mr. Tunick. But his willing subjects were more than happy to oblige his instructions, even if they included crawling through the wind across slippery rocks or lying facedown in the sand while being pummeled by waves. As has been tradition in installations past, each volunteer will receive one of Mr. Tunick’s prints in exchange for their efforts.

    Most of the participants spent the night in Montauk, at a number of hotels offering discounts to those involved in the project, including Solé East and the Montauk Yacht Club. Dave and Ginevra Travis decided to make the trip from Brooklyn to be immortalized by Mr. Tunick on their 10th wedding anniversary. The couple brought along their 4-month-old daughter, Indigo, who was the youngest participant by far.

    Since word was spread through networks of artists via the Internet, there weren’t too many Montauk residents who showed up to participate. Still, there were a few familiar faces in the sea of nudity.

    Martha Reichert, who lives in Montauk, said she has been pulling all-nighters quite regularly since returning to her hometown after graduating from Brooklyn Law School, and that meeting with friends for a naked romp at the Lighthouse was a welcome reprieve from studying for a bar exam on July 27.

    Nate Best, a photographer who also lives in Montauk, said this was his second opportunity to participate in one of Mr. Tunick’s projects. “We were supposed to do one in Maui, but we were up all night doing our own photo shoot, and slept through it,” he said. This time around, Mr. Best’s only regret was that he didn’t sneak his own camera in to shoot the shoot.

    Although Mr. Tunick’s installations have taken him all over the world to some unusual places, he said this was his first lighthouse. He has visited Montauk in the past, and admitted that he had envisioned setting up his models in a yoga-inspired “table-top crab position” on a beach for quite some time.  

    He said was delighted to have procured a permit to shoot at the Montauk Lighthouse with the help of Terrie Sultan, the director of the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, and James Salomon, who runs an East Hampton art gallery.

    “It’s a huge deal to get a permit for a New York State park — this could set a precedent,” he said. Now that he has successfully pulled off one project on state land, Mr. Tunick said he hopes to go after the big prize in the near future — an even larger installation at Niagara Falls.

    Having worked with the Parrish Art Museum before, Mr. Tunick said he is a frequent contributor to the organization, and to the Watermill Center, where he has donated pieces in the past. One of his works, perhaps one from the Montauk project, will be up for auction at the center’s upcoming benefit on July 25.