Belgian beauty Marisa Papen has been on a quest to get naked around the world, resulting in some seriously scandalous photo shoots.
But never before had she run in with the law for her lusty photography. That changed when she did the unthinkable—stripping down before the Pyramids of Egypt, a country where you definitely don’t want to go topless in public
She posed camelback in one photo from the series, taken by Jesse Walker for his ENKI eyewear campaign.
“It was actually Jesse Walker, the photographer who came up with the idea,” Papen told Maxim via email. “He had been to Egypt four times before and wanted to go back in time.”
“We wanted to show Ancient Egypt, when women were Queens and Goddesses and had the same rights as men.
During their first photo shoot outside the Pyramids at Giza, which was hotter than the Sahara, they managed to tip off local police and skirt religious law.
“We got approached by the police several times. One time we were in the middle of the desert, and this car just came roaring out of the nowhere, and there was dust and smoke and sand everywhere,” Papen told us.
“It was the military police, and Jesse was yelling at me, ‘Put your clothes, put your clothes on’… But in Cairo we were always able to talk ourselves out of the situation somehow.”
But when they headed to the ruins and temples of Luxor for more shots, local officers weren’t so lenient.
“In Luxor, the energy in general was much more intense. From the moment we got busted I knew we weren’t going to be able to bribe this guy off.” Papen said. “He was serious.”
They were thrown in jail overnight, but Walker managed to delete the photos from his camera. In a bit of trickery, Papen told the judge she was wearing nude underwear the entire time, which resulted in them only receiving a “stern warning” rather than an official punishment.
“We both had no idea how and when we would get out. We both felt extremely blessed when we got taken out and were able to go to court,” Papen said.
“They didn’t have any proof I was actually naked and of course we had some time to think things through. I don’t think I’d be answering these questions if we would have told the truth.”
They were able to walk away with their freedom… and a few scorching shots from their campaign intact. Nice try, Egypt!
Despite the ordeal, Marisa Papen is undeterred. “The word afraid doesn’t appear in my dictionary,” she told us.
Her next adventure will be to the Congo, where she will bare all to call attention to rapidly disappearing wildlife.