By Elena Cala Buscarino
Buffalo, NY – Looking back, my oddest Buffalo moment of the year came sans clothing, No! Not my clothing. I simply attended the opening of Spencer Tunick's installation of nudes at the Buffalo Central Terminal this past May. For those of you who may not have an understanding of such things, the rule of nudes goes something like this: One nude, Michelangelo; two nudes, Rubens; three nudes, Gucchione; thousands of nudes in very public places, Tunick.
To my thinking, he is a genius on a few different levels. One: He gets many, many free models. Two: He manages to get these models to get nakey and pose. In this case, nearly 2,000 of them in a vacuous terminal that probably hasn't been warm inside its stone walls since the trains were running regularly. If nudity is the key to compliance, I may have to insist that the entire family, including elderly aunts, get into their birthday suits for this year's holiday snapshot. But I'm getting ahead of myself...
A couple I know was part of the Tunick shot. Before the event, they invited friends, including me, to join them to be a part of art -- in the photo. I replied that as an avid photographer myself, participating would put me on the wrong end of the camera, and unless I needed to protect mine from the elements, a camera would never come between my clothing and myself.
However, I jumped at the chance when the invitation came from the same friends to view the resultant photographs this past May. The exhibit, housed in the same terminal where the photographs were shot, was packed. I guessed that each participant had come, bringing at least two friends. At $25 each, a big chunk of money would go to the Albright Knox Art Museum and the Central Terminal Restoration Group. Again, Tunick proved to be a genius; wresting money from the pockets of his pocketless models for two very good causes.
Once inside, we saw a behind-the-scenes video of the making of the photographs. It included nude people marching past a camera that was obviously hidden, as the prevailing comment from those around us who had posed was, "I didn't know there was a camera there." Surprise! And the video was also for sale. We overheard talk of how polite fellow participants had been about not looking too hard at one another. At this point the husband of the couple we were with commented bitterly that though he had been fully nude, a girl next to him said, "Oh. You have black toenail polish on. Cool."
"Can you believe it?" he asked. "I'm nude and she's lookin' at my toes!" In a roomful of naked people, his black toenails were what set him apart. Next came the deliciously sublime irony of the evening. Beside each large photograph stood a guard. In front of each photo was a red, velvet rope. And on this side of each rope there were people, leaning over the rope and pointing out to friends and family exactly where they appeared - naked -- in the mass of nudes, whereupon the guard would politely tell them not to reach over the rope. There was no exception to this scenario at any of the photos I witnessed. I found it to be great fun when my friends pointed out their bare backsides and were similarly admonished.
And then I saw the forest through the trees. As I looked at each photograph of the heap of nude bodies, I wanted to say over and over, "What terrible thing happened here?" There was nothing of the sensual or romantic in these portraits for me. I flashed back to the video and recalled scratchy black and white World War II footage of marching nudes from even further back in my consciensness.
Tunick's cautionary message disguised as art called forth Auschwitz, Guyana, Vietnam, and several other mass devastations I've witnessed through the world news in my lifetime. I thought that if there ever were tragedy on the scale of what Tunick depicts...there may not be anyone left to record it on film.
That is exactly what prompted my reply later that night at a restaurant when my friend asked what I had thought of the exhibit. "Well, it weren't for Tunick," I said, "you might have invited me to dinner, mooned me in the parking lot, and asked me to contribute to your favorite charity. I'm glad you did it this way..." I also think Tunick's models were part of something much bigger than art.
Listener-commentator Elena Cala Buscarino lives in the Buffalo area where she writes and teaches.
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