SKIRMISHER

Spencer Tunick, photographer of great masses of naked people, outdid his previous record when more than 18,000 people turned up to strip naked at Mexico City’s Zocalo Plaza.

“I just create shapes and forms with human bodies. It’s an abstraction, it’s a performance, it’s an installation,” Tunick said. “So I don’t care how many people showed up. All I know is that I filled up my space.”

The heart of this city since it was founded by the Aztecs in 1325, the Zocalo measures about 21,000 square yards — the size of five football fields.

Men and women from a broad cross-section of ages and social classes began arriving before dawn, although most volunteers were young men.

“The important thing is not that it’s your body or someone else’s, but that you participate in something as a society,” said Oscar Roman Munoz, a 25-year-old engineer. “This reflects the need for change and integration in world trends.”

For Tunick’s first photo, the models stood upright and gave a military-like salute to their national flag. In another, they lay down to form a blanket of flesh around a naked man in a wheelchair. Between shots, they burst out into verses of Mexican folk songs such as “Cielito Lindo.”

This may be ugly, but just a thought: if somebody had unleashed thousands of hungry squirrels as these young men lie prone on the ground, you think they would have belted out a screamed-out version of Mexico’s national anthem?

Spencer tells his models: “Ok, boys, we only have two major rules. Look after the balls of the man beside you, and watch out for those goddamn squirrels.”

The great teeming naked masses.

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