(Times of Israel) On September 17, 2011, as the sun crept above the shores of the Dead Sea, more than 1,000 Israelis stripped naked and posed together for a now-iconic photo shoot with American photographer Spencer Tunick.
The event, which helped propel the Dead Sea into the campaign for the New Seven Wonders of the World, was executed by Ari Fruchter, a high-tech executive hoping to draw international attention to the fact that the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth and the source of some its most potent minerals, is shrinking.
After those hundreds of people put their clothes back on and the buzz from the photo shoot died down, Fruchter, a New York native and Israeli resident, felt adrift. A few months later he had left his job at SanDisk, a flash memory card maker, and was itching for a new purpose. Convinced that the Dead Sea could become his pet project, he decided to launch a new enterprise, this one focusing not on the sea’s shores, but its salt.
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