Naked world

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11.05pm, Channel 4

Spencer Tunick is an artist who specialises in taking photographs of public nudes. Not just single people but huge crowds, turned into "bodyscapes" when thousands of naked volunteers drape themselves around a public place.

This much-more-fascinating-than-you-would-think film follows him as he organises photographs in cities around the globe, from Montreal to Galway, London and Tokyo, revealing the different cultural attitudes to nudity (the Japanese have to overcome enormous taboos, while many Australians, as you might expect, have no worries).

The pictures, while, obviously, displaying naked people, are curiously non-sexual, though striking. There is something stunning, and even beautiful, about the mass of nudes on a bridge in Melbourne, or arranged by the city's riverside, like a tide of humanity flowing into the water.

But what is most memorable is the reaction of the people taking part - who feel they have been liberated, re-affirmed or, even, made a political act.

As a coloured South African explains: "Posing naked was a declaration that I am free to do whatever I want to and wherever I want to do it. I am taking off my clothes and looking into the future." Which leaves the rest of us, of course, looking into a behind.

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