Thank you, Spencer Tunick

Decisions, decisions - how does anyone make decisions? I like to think I am a rational and methodical person who weighs up the arguments, compiles spreadsheets and evaluates the advantages of the options before me. In fact (although I can do a pretty good spreadsheet) my decision-making is a random mixture of impulse and inertia. I also rely on irrational “defining moments”, when a situation, or a chance remark, brings things into focus, and my decision is made.

The other day I attended a “workshop” (really a sort of informal presentation) designed to promote the internal reorganisation of the company I work for. Since the changes they are planning could leave me without a job by the end of the year, I felt obliged to go along, although I have become increasingly dispirited by the work I am doing, my lack of prospects and the remoteness of management. I reasoned that it would be a good thing to develop a positive attitude and look for new opportunities thrown up by this reorganisation.  Since this meeting, further developments have brought my possible departure much closer.

The workshop was held in rooms at the Wellcome Institute in Euston Road, among a fascinating collection of artworks and artefacts relating to medical science.

Actually, it wasn’t all bad. Looked at objectively, the reorganisation is both necessary and ambitious, with some chance of success. I found myself thinking contradictory thoughts - one the one hand I could find a place for myself - on the other, it’s time to get out.  Some of the people taking part said constructive and sensible things about the problems and the opportunities for growth. All good stuff.  Incidentally it’s interesting that the imagery used in these presentations shows people doing exciting things - racing cyclists, hot-air ballooning, parties on the beach - rather than our actual jobs - sitting in front of computer screens, or manning data centres.

In the corridor as we left I stopped to look at a huge print of this picture by Spencer Tunick, of one of his famous mass nude shoots. I think this one was in Melbourne - it’s titled “Women aged 35 and over”. The way he creates a “beach” of human bodies, contrasted with the deep blue water and the urban skyline, is just breathtaking.

The amount of organisation involved in getting hundreds, even thousands of people to take their clothes off in public and lie down in neat rows, all adopting the same position, must be extraordinary, to create what is actually a fairly straightforward (beautifully executed) photograph.  In addition to creating these magnificent images, he encourages people to expose themselves, and to engage in the artistic process.  Many people who have taken part in these shoots have found them a liberating and uplifting experience.

The methods he uses contrast with another photographer of humanity en masse, Andreas Gursky, who uses a great deal of digital manipulation, as in his massive panorama of stock exchange traders, which is in the Tate Modern. This is the only image I could find, it doesn’t really convey the full effect.  If you consider the full size is about 2 x 3 metres, you’ll get the idea.

 As I began to turn these thoughts over in my mind, a colleague stopped beside me - he had spoken in the workshop, and is a thoughtful and intelligent person.  He glanced at the Tunick and said, in a tone of mixed bewilderment and contempt, “what’s that for?” .  In these situations it’s easy, and a lot of fun, to think up a marvellous put-down afterwards, but I didn’t say anything coherent at the time.  Only on the way home did it occur to me that this was indeed a defining moment.  I don’t belong here.