2500 Australians Pose Naked For Skin Cancer Awareness At Bondi Beach

Bondi Beach saw 2500 volunteers getting naked for the cause of raising awareness around skin cancer and encouraging people to get their skin checked often. Artist Spencer Tunick orchestrated this installation on Saturday morning in Australia.

2500 Australians signed up to raise awareness for something that kills almost 2500 of them every year. According to World Cancer Research Fund International's statistics, Australia tops the list of skin cancer incidence and rates in the world in both categories of Melanoma and Non-melanoma skin cancer.

Australians Pose Naked For Skin Cancer Awareness

In the early morning of Saturday, November 26, the volunteers reached Bondi Beach in Australia for the photoshoot. Reportedly the beach did not have permission for nudity, so they had to change the legislation and has until 10 am that day to stay nude for the photographs. Around 4 am Tunick started giving instructions to the volunteers as they posed on the open beach.

According to Tunick, "Skin unites us and protects us" and he further continues to say, "I use the amazing array of body types and skin tones to create my work, so it feels perfectly appropriate to take part in this effort in that my medium is the nude human form." This art installation hopes to encourage Australians to check their skin for cancer at close intervals to catch early signs of the life-threatening disease.

This was not Tunick's first naked art installation, he earlier tried a similar one at the stairs of the Sydney Opera House for Mardi Gras in 2010.

One of the volunteers from this installation, Trisha Cladera said, "I haven’t done it before … but I thought it was a prime spot to get your kit off." She also pointed out, "We’d never met each other before, and after our first couple of hours we took our clothes off … You’ve only got one body, so why not celebrate it?" While another volunteer Sara Bowen who has a sister and father both of whom survived skin cancer, said, "It was freezing, but also empowering to be with so many people supporting the cause and also just being like naked and seeing so many different people and shapes and sizes," she continued saying, "Everyone just being comfortable being naked. It was wonderful."

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