(Photo By: Tzvika Stein)
By: Abigail Klein Leichman - April 20, 2021
When 1,200 Israelis posed nude at the Dead Sea for American art photographer Spencer Tunick in 2011, project initiator Ari Leon Fruchter hoped the eye-popping images would start a wave of activism to save the unique saltwater lake from environmental extinction.
But although “Naked Sea” was viewed by half a billion people, a few years later the situation had only worsened. In fact, the spot where the photographs were taken had collapsed into a giant sinkhole.
The Dead Sea, the lowest place on Earth, is shrinking fast and dramatically due to evaporation and industrial extraction of its minerals.
Fruchter learned that if it isn’t stabilized with a steady infusion of freshwater, this ancient wonder of the world will be nothing more than a series of dry sinkholes within 50 years.
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