Having already published a trio of popular books that juxtapose photographs, taken in different cities, of people wearing both their clothes and nothing at all, photographer Greg Friedler has set his lens on Sin City. "I always shoot in places that really intrigue me and Vegas intrigues me to no end," he says. "It's got the glitz and the glamour, and it's got the seediness. It's got a whole bunch of really fake, shallow people, and a bunch of people who are really blue collar and working in the casinos."
With his proposed Naked Las Vegas, Friedler wants to show them all, the strippers and the exhibitionists, and regular Las Vegans seeking their moment in the sun. Friedler has only 40 or so people committed for the Vegas shoot—"You never know if they're going to show up or not"—and needs between 125 and 150 people to get started. If he finds them soon, he could be in town as early as this fall.
Friedler, who lives in Denver, got into photography at boarding school, when his dad, an amateur photographer, gave him a camera and suggested he enroll in a photo class. "He was dead-on, I'd never taken a class like it." Friedler studied political science and French at the University of Colorado, with half a mind to become a stockbroker or a lawyer, but he couldn't shake his shutter bug. After Colorado he moved to New York to study photography.
When he first decided to do a series of portraits, he planned to shoot people with their clothes on. Then he decided it might be more interesting to shoot them naked. Then he decided to do both. "I was doing something that was a big concern to me, but I had no idea what I was doing," he says. "I'm concerned about how people look, and do they look the way we expect them to look?"
The result, Naked New York, is a subtle exploration of both nudity and clothing. Friedler goes for straightforward portrait shots—no poses, no smiles—that are not much different than you'd see on a passport. The unspectacular bodies on display, with their misshapen curves and folds and rolls, their strange juxtapositions of hair and hairlessness, their long arms and spindly fingers, the often blank stares, reveal less than you might think when taken on their own. But when compared to shots of the same people fully dressed, the clothes seem to both conceal and clarify the identities of the subjects. Each photo has a caption indicating the person's occupation and age, and both labels further add to our own, often unconscious expectations of what different kinds of people should look like.
After the New York book was published in 1997, Friedler followed up with Naked Los Angeles in 1998 and Naked London in 2000. Of the three cities, LA was the hardest shoot. The city was spread out, for one, and everyone was crazy about their image. "They're worried about their movie careers —when they're a plumber."
What surprised him was how willing people were to come before a stranger, take off their clothes and bare everything. Some did it because they believed in art. Some were exhibitionists. Others had issues with their body image, and hoped the photos might help boost their esteem. Friedler says some subjects wound up sharing their whole life stories. "It's something I would never do."
Friedler gets propositioned all the time about new cities to add. On one website a writer suggested he do Naked Peoria or Naked Tulsa. But Friedler doesn't want to waste his time on mid-level cities with few minorities. Even Denver, despite its sizable Latino population and historic black communities, doesn't interest him. "Naked White Denver? No thanks. It's not what I do."
In London, a documentary film crew followed Friedler around for seven weeks as he approached regular Londoners about posing in the buff. He wants to duplicate that approach in Las Vegas and create a serious documentary mixed with the titillating personal revelations of Taxicab Confessions and the flesh appeal of Real Sex.
When I asked him what he'd like to do after the Las Vegas project, he told me, "If I had enough money I'd shoot Tokyo and Berlin." A moment later, however, he was worried about being labeled a one-trick pony. He's also done portrait photographs of children as well as an exciting black-and-white series of photographs about life in sensual Havana, and everyone was fully clothed.
"I'm far from being limited to shooting naked people and the shock value of that," he said. "I really want to make a name for myself, and break out of that mold. Even more than shooting naked people, I'm a portrait artist."
(People interested in posing can contact Friedler at
http://nakedlasvegas.net.)