Photographer Erica Simone shovels snow in the nude. Photo by Erica Simone

Nothing turns the head like nudity. Photographers know this especially well, as countless of them have turned their lenses toward the simple beauty of the human body. But what happens when the photographer is the one showing skin?

Erica Simone, a Parisian-born photographer living in New York City, has created a a series of striking self-portraits that feature her doing everyday activities around the city — riding the bus, shoveling snow, window-shopping — all while completely naked. The impetus for the project, Simone says, came from a fashion show.

“I was sitting around thinking about fashion and what would we be if we were naked and what if we didn’t have fashion to show who we were, our status, how much money we had, all these things,” she told the New York Daily News. “Then I got the photographic idea of shooting people naked in the street, but just doing regular things, not especially posing, or being naked, but doing whatever.”

That idea has turned into Simone’s new exhibit, “Nuw York: Self Portraits of a Bare Urban Citizen,” which features 20 photographs of her braving strangers, police officers and the New York cold. As for the photos themselves, Simone uses a tripod and a remote control shutter release so that she is the only one to touch the camera and the only one to take a photograph.

To see more of Simone’s photos, check out her exhibit when it opens next month at the Dash Gallery in Tribeca, or head to her *NSFW* website.