Leonard Nimoy Secret Selves

Leonard Nimoy: Secret Selves was comprised of the artist/actor’s photographic series that explores the lost or hidden self.

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Nimoy’s photographs were inspired by Aristophanes’ theory that humans were once double-sided creatures with two heads and multiple limbs before Zeus cleaved man in two and left him forever struggling to be whole again. Nimoy’s images reveal their subjects’ other half. Shooting in nearby Northampton, Massachusetts, Nimoy recruited volunteers from the local community with an open call for portrait models willing to be photographed posed and dressed as their true or imagined “secret selves.” From the popular rock star and superman to the more unexpected dog lover and Pan, these various secret identities (off-line avatars as they might be described) offered an intimate, sometimes humorous, and often profound new look at the residents of Northampton and the inner yearnings and fantasies that we all share.

Accompanying the redundant, life-size photographs was a video documenting the artist’s conversations with his subjects and the poignant, personal moments he masterfully elicited from his unlikely muses.

Leonard Nimoy, Matt – Painter of Americans who have witnessed war, 2007