He knows that he is an unlikely champion for the size-acceptance movement; body image is a topic he never really thought about before. But for the last eight years, Mr. Nimoy, who is 76 and an established photographer, has been snapping pictures of plus-size women in all their naked glory.
He has a show of photographs of obese women on view at the R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, Mass., through June; a larger show at the gallery is scheduled to coincide with the November publication of his book on the subject, “The Full Body Project,” from Five Ties Publishing. The Louis Stern Fine Arts gallery in Los Angeles and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston have acquired a few images from the project.
Recently my older son (who dressed up as Spock last Halloween) and I got to see Leonard Nimoy and his wife in a video they made for a portion of Griffith Observatory that they had endowed, and while it's a little freaky to see Mr. Spock in his 70's and comfortable with himself, he's certainly earned it. I used to get the sense he wasn't, especially back on Mission: Impossible in the early post-Star Trek years.
You can see a sample of his new nudes, the "Full Body Project", on his own website. They're certainly bold, and from this sample it looks like he's generally gone more frank and enthusiastic than arty and formal.
Some of his other photography seems to go the opposite way, like his previous newsmaking "Shekhina Project", which took on Jewish orthodoxy by shooting nude models wearing sacred garments.
And for a combination of both tendencies, there's this self-portrait, where the tension of Nimoy's celebrity plays against an almost too simple depiction of an aging man and his erotic memory.
It's a far cry from his musical efforts, and I don't mean to slag a hero who brought Judaism to the most successful science fiction television show of all time. Even if he did sing "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins". It seems that his latest project is right in line with the "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" philosophy of the original TV series. At the gallery:
The responses have ranged from joy to horror. One formerly obese woman said the photos terrified her; she said they recalled a picture she kept in her wallet as a reminder of her former self. Other women have thanked Richard Michelson, the Northampton gallery owner, for displaying the images, and even asked if Mr. Nimoy wanted to photograph them.
“I am actually amazed at how little negative reaction there has been,” said Mr. Michelson. “I attribute this in part to the gallery setting, and the fact that Northampton, Massachusetts, is perhaps the most liberal city in the most liberal state in the nation.”
“We do overhear some reductive ‘Is Nimoy into fat chicks’ comments when the gallery room is first entered,” he continued, “but in fact the fun nature of the work and the quality seem to shut people up by the time they leave. I’ve had a few crank e-mails with snide remarks, but not a one from gallery visitors.”
Don't forget, it was Kirk and Spock who originally brought sexy back.
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