Naked Installations - Amsterdam

Dozens of women posed naked on their bicycles on a bridge over one of Amsterdam's historic canals this time - a unique sight even in a city famed for its relaxed attitude toward nudity and sex. They were among 2,000 men and women who participated in a series of four nude group photos in the city in the early hours of the morning as part of the latest project of U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick.

He works directly with the urban landscape in a very personal style; using the nude body as a raw material to intervene and transform a chosen site, and then documenting the events with photography and video. All directedwith a megaphone. He is widely celebrated for his elaborately posed photographs of nude figures in public settings.

The first and largest composition was in a decidedly prosaic location: a parking garage on the outer ring of the city. But what the location lacked in romance, it made up for in style. Participants lined the railings of the garage's twin circular towers, creating a pattern of multicoloured stripes against the white building and an overcast sky. "It was very hard to find space in a city meant for such a small amount of people," Tunick said. "I was very lucky to get almost 2,000 to fill a massive car park."

The women on bikes were selected from the larger group and posed with their chins pointed triumphantly upward toward the sky. Other compositions included a group of men posing together near the parking garage and a mixed group of men and women on another bridge.

His installations have taken place across the globe and he became famous for photographing thousands of naked people in public settings. He set a record for naked photography with  18,000 people in the buff in Mexico City last month.