Photographs by Leonard Nimoy
Essay by Donald Kuspit

According to the Kabbalah, evil came into the world once God became separate from the “Shekhina,” the deity’s feminine counterpart. The Shekhina came to be understood as a crucial element of both divine and human spirit, symbolizing the creativity and wisdom without which no being is complete. Renowned actor Leonard Nimoy has turned to photography as a means of inquiry into the mysteries of Shekhina. In his introductory text, Nimoy explains the influence Shekhina has had on the work: “I have imagined her as ubiquitous, watchful and often in motion. This work is my quest for insight, the exploration of my own spirituality, and, as such, has been a deeply moving and expanding process.” Shekhina is an intensely personal meditation on the tensions of the spirit and the flesh, by a figure who has himself taken on an otherworldly significance to many.

In his introductory essay, critic, and writer Donald Kuspit describes Nimoy’s subject as, “the transmutation of sexual desire into spiritual aspiration, that is, the problem of sublimating sexual attraction into ideal beauty.” In Kuspit’s provocative text, Nimoy’s fascination with the female body involves an element of temptation as well as transcendence: “In Nimoy’s ingenious photographs the covered figure symbolizes transcendental truth, while the uncovered figure evokes profane desire. The most intriguing photographs are perhaps those in which the figure is half clothed, half naked, conveying the conflict of spirituality and desire that I think is at the core of Nimoy’s art…. It is Nimoy’s ability to convey woman’s many-sidedness – Shekhina and succubus at once -that makes his photographs profound.”

About the Authors:

LEONARD NIMOY was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1931. After his feature film debut in 1951, he pursued his acting career on the big screen as well as on stage and television. However, it was Nimoy’s portrayal of the character Spock in the science fiction series “Star Trek” that earned him both iconic status as well as three Emmy nominations. Aside from his numerous credits as an actor and director, Nimoy is also a successful recording artist and the author of two autobiographies and several volumes of poetry, two of which also feature his photographs. He has pursued an interest in photography since his teens, and studied at UCLA with Robert Heineken in the early 1970s. He recently finished an appointment as artist in residence by Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York and Louis Stern Fine Art in Los Angeles.

Donald Kuspit is one of America`s most respected critics, professor of are history at SUNY, Stonybrook, and author of Redeeming Art and Idiosyncratic Identities.

Hardcover / $39.95 USD
10.25″ x 10.25″ / 96 pages
50 duotone photographs
August 2005
ISBN: 978-1-8841671-64

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