Human bodies to car body: Photographer shapes the female form into a Fiat

 

 

Commercial photographer RJ Muna has captured dancers, performers, and automobiles before but not quite in the same way as a recent project for Fiat. In the advertisement, Muna photographed twelve naked women covered in body paint, forming what appears to be a Fiat 500 Abarth Cabrio. It's a cool photographic effect which was, largely, accomplished without the help of Photoshop.

"When I first heard about it, I was like, that's a great idea, we gotta do this," Muna says in the below behind-the-scenes clip from the Fiat shoot. "The thing that's really exciting about this shoot is the challenge of getting it together, the challenge of making it work. I think it's one of those ads that's going to be a double, triple, quadruple take. We're going to look at it three or four times and go back to it."

A group of circus performers, dancers and contortionists were used to form the human Fiat after being intricately illustrated by an expert body painter. Advertising agency The Richards Group was behind the human car concept and while it's a striking creation, it's actually been done before.

Last year, bodies were used to form a twisted, human car as part of an anti-speeding campaign in Australia. Models have also been painted and contorted to form human motorcycles.

While there is semi-nudity in the advertisement and the behind-the-scenes footage, the focus of the image is on fitness, flexibility and athleticism rather than sexuality, which is exemplified in the Fiat ad's tagline: "Made of pure muscle." The result is a head-turning photo and advertising campaign that's hard to forget.