Stockland Martel

Who says you need a wardrobe person on every big shoot? For the cover of ESPN The Magazine’s second annual Body Issue, Art Streiber photographed the USA Women’s Water Polo team, and these gifted athletes were wearing not a stitch of clothing. (Hey, it’s the Body Issue, not the Caftan Issue.)

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The USA Women's Water Polo team. Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine. (Creative director: Siung Tjia; director of photography: Catriona Ni Aolain; photo editor: Nancy Weisman.)

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“Catriona Ni Aolain, the director of photography at ESPN The Magazine, contacted me weeks in advance and said that she had a group of 12 women to shoot for the ‘Body Issue,’ and that we’d be shooting singles and group shots, in studio and underwater over two days,” Art explains.

“We started with all of the girls in robes and arranged them so that their varying heights created two ‘waves.’ We then had them lose the robes and tested the shot with bikini bottoms. After all of the positioning had been finalized, they took off their bikini bottoms and we went to work.”

Art also shot a vertical version of the cover and spent the morning shooting singles of each of the women, which are featured inside the issue.

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Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

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Art’s cover, by the way, was the first to be featured in The SPD Cover of the Day, a new column at Grids, the Society of Publication Designers’ blog.

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Update: And Bloomberg Sports did a piece on the cover too:

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Art also photographed the team underwater, an image highlighted by Streetwater, a Facebook- and Twitter-based showcase for photography (more on Streetwater here).

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Photo by Art Streiber for ESPN The Magazine.

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“I was in full scuba gear and wearing two weight belts,” Art recalls. “I went down first and then signaled for the women to drop in three rows of four each, all the while covering their equipment. All of the players were incredibly fit, strong, fun, willing—and wonderful to work with.”

ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue features nude portraits by many other top-shelf photographers, including our own Nadav Kander…

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Herschel Walker. Photo by Nadav Kander for ESPN The Magazine.

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…as well Sheryl Nields, Robert Maxwell, Finlay Mackay, and more. Click here to view the gallery.

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