Spencer Tunick creates 'naked Dead Sea'

Over the weekend American artist Spencer Tunick completed one of his most ambitious photographic projects to date when 1,200 nude volunteers modelled for him in the Dead Sea, Israel before dawn on Saturday.

It was his first Middle East mass shoot and Israeli tourism officials hope the project will help draw attention to the Dead Sea in a competition to find the new Seven Wonders of the World.

The Dead Sea is competing against 27 other natural sites around the world in the finals of the New7Wonders of Nature online global campaign after beating 440 other nominees.

Tunick is famous for organising large-scale nude shoots and since 1994 he has organised more than 75 human installations around the world.

The idea is to gather individuals en masse without their clothes on, and Tunick directs them into groups to form amorphous shapes.