New Yorker, 06/20/2005
By Rebecca Mead

To Boldly Go

Leonard Nimoy about Kristie Alley's film "Fat Actress": "... The message she is sending is, on one hand, I am fat and it's O.K., and, on the other hand, it is just terrible. The taste is awful, awful, awful; and so is the level of humor, if you can call it that."

As a photographer himself, Leonard Nimoy has worked on a project called "Maximum Beauty" which is shown at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York, and portrays full-bodied people.

"I had been working on female figures for a number of years, and a lady approached me and said, 'Your work seems to deal with mostly a particular body-type,'" he said. "She was about three hundred pounds – a very large lady, a very lovely lady, and she came to our studio and we photographed her." Later on he added photos of a troupe who call themselves the Fat Bottom Revue.

In 2002 Leonard Nimoy has published "Shekhina", a book of photography which deals with the manifestation of God's female aspect on earth. "Maximum Beauty" is more secular. "There is an homage to a famous pair of images by Helmut Newton, in which high-fashion models walk towards a camera first clothed and then naked," he explained. About the ladies on the photographs: "They were very proud, very comfortable,... I admire them."

His personal experience with full-bodiedness is limited: "My biggest weight issue was maybe fifteen or eighteen years ago, when I quit smoking and put on ten pounds."

When celebrating their birthdays with William Shatner at a Los Angeles steakhouse he did not have bread and was very light on the potatoes. "I try to watch my weight, because I don't want to be running to the tailor regularly, letting my pants out, then taking them in, then letting them out. I try to stay within my wardrobe."