Leonard Nimoy Press Information
Included below are hi-res images and information regarding Leonard Nimoy’s various projects.
To download individual images, simply click to open and then drag to your desktop or right-click and save. Please cite all images with: Image courtesy of R.Michelson Galleries — www.RMichelson.com
We allow the use of three images. Email RM@RMichelson.com to obtain permission to use additional images.
See Leonard Nimoy’s photography on our main website
Photographs of Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy during the Secret Selves photoshoot at R. Michelson Galleries
Please cite all images below with: Image courtesy of R. Michelson Galleries — www.RMichelson.com | Photo by Seth Kaye Photography — www.sethkaye.com
Please cite all images above with: Image courtesy of R.Michelson Galleries — www.RMichelson.com | Photo by Seth Kaye Photography — www.sethkaye.com
Gallery Owner Richard Michelson and Leonard Nimoy
Secret Selves – Behind The Scenes by Richard Michelson
Secret Selves
Information on the Series:
Do you have a Secret Self? According to Greek mythology, humans were once four legged and four armed. When they became too arrogant and powerful, Zeus split them in two. Since then we have been searching constantly for our other half in order to feel complete. Do you have another half? Do you have a self never revealed? Who do you think you are?
In November 2008, Leonard Nimoy was at R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Massachusetts, to begin his latest photographic journey: Secret Selves. He gathered over one hundred subjects from all walks of life and asked them the question, “Who do you think you are?”
Each subject was recorded as Mr. Nimoy interviewed them and created a photographic portrait of their “alternate identity”. As Mr. Nimoy wrote: “I am hoping to be surprised and delighted by what shows up in front of me. Anything from full costume to nudity— I would encourage all of it.” From the popular rock star and superman to the more unexpected dog lover and Pan, these secret identities offer an intimate, sometimes humorous, and often profound new look at the inner yearnings and fantasies that we all share.
Link to all the photographs used in the show (54.7 MB)
Please cite all images with: Image courtesy of R.Michelson Galleries — www.RMichelson.com
View our main Secret Selves page for more information on individual photographs
The Full Body Project
Information on the Series:
These photos of full figured women bring challenge to our entrenched concepts of beauty. Nimoy revisits recognizable works of women by artists such as Herb Ritts, Helmut Newton, Matisse, and Botticelli. The models, a burlesque troupe out of San Francisco called the Fat Bottom Revue, resist the “culture bound” ideas of beauty and sexuality so prevalent in fashion magazines and on television and proudly wear their own skin.
This current body of work is a departure for me. For a number of years, I have been producing images using the female figure… but, the people in these pictures always fell under the umbrella of a certain body type…within range of the current social consensus of what is ‘beautiful’.
The women photographed for The Full Body Project will tell you that ideas of beauty and sexuality are ‘culture bound’-… not universal or fixed, and that they vary and fluctuate depending on place and time. They will tell you that too many people suffer because the body they live in is not the body you find in the fashion magazines. — Leonard Nimoy
Shekhina
Information on the Series:
When Shekhina, Leonard Nimoy’s first book of photography, was published in 2002, it sold out of its first printing in less than a month. It created such a stir that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote, “Nimoy is igniting an artistic debate…over art and censorship that echoes the battles that swirled over Mapplethorpe, and other artists like Andres Serrano and Chris Ofili, who created controversial religious imagery.”
Based on the concept in the Kabbalah of the female manifestation of God, Nimoy’s Shekhina explores the provocative and complex relationship of the spirit and the flesh. Time Out New York writes, “In Shekhina, he fuses his love of the camera with his Orthodox Jewish upbringing… Nimoy’s women emerge from the darkness as sensual beacons. They explore the mythology of Kabbalism and Nimoy’s own spirituality.”
Note on the hand series: The hand gesture made so famous in his role as Spock has its roots in his religious background and was a big part of his Shekhina series.
Eye Contact
Information on the Series:
This portfolio consists of 25 photographs chosen from Leonard Nimoy’s 60 year career as a photographer. Each photograph is printed, numbered, and signed by Mr. Nimoy in an edition of twenty-five 8×10 images, of which the first ten are sold only as a full portfolio in a linen box, including the statement below:
In this collection I am concerned with artful voyeurism. The model is given license to explore a personal experience which is often quite moving, although the photographer’s presence inescapably alters the moment. To reclaim their deepest human emotions, the subjects must turn back to the internal space and free themselves of the contact with me or my camera. It is the instant between the private and the seen, that brief affirmation of the self which I find deeply affecting and the one that I strive to capture and pass along to the viewer. — Leonard Nimoy
Please cite all images with: Image courtesy of R.Michelson Galleries — www.RMichelson.com