Spencer Tunick is world-famous for photographing hundreds of naked people at a time. His latest work brings to life his interpretation of scenes from Richard Wagner’s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen. He shot it in downtown Munich yesterday and used 1 700 naked volunteers, spray-painted either gold or red.

If you are not familiar with his work, it is well worth a look into. Since the early nineties, Tunick has set up nude shoots all over the world, photographing 7 000 naked people in Barcelona and hundreds of nudes in New York’s Grand Central train station. Last September he photographed 1 000 Israelis standing naked in the Dead Sea to raise awareness of the diminishing water levels.

So why naked people? And thousands of them? According to his website, Tunick’s installations enable individuals ‘en masse, without their clothing, grouped together (to) metamorphose into a new shape.’

“The individuals en masse, without their clothing, grouped together metamorphose into a new shape. The bodies extend into and upon the landscape, like a substance. These grouped masses, which do no underscore sexuality, become abstractions that challenge or reconfigure one’s views of nudity and privacy.”

This time around, Tunick was invited to Munich to help the Bavarian State Opera launch their 2012 summer season. Have a look at the gallery below to see what went down:

[Source: Daily Mail]