Leonard Nimoy's Photography: Let Your Secret Nerd Rejoice!

It may come as delightful news that in real life, Mr. Spock is a photographer. But Leonard Nimoy, the famed Star Trek actor, has a long history with the medium — and is actually quite the Renaissance man. He studied under the acclaimed photographer Robert Heinecken in the '70s, has published poetry and received four honorary doctorates. And based on his latest photo project, one might say he's testing the waters of Aristophanic psychotherapy (I think I just coined something).

Opening this weekend at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is Nimoy's latest photo series, "Secret Selves." For the past decade or so, Nimoy has been focusing his artistic efforts on photography. Although much of his previous work involves a lot of skin, this project is about what's inside the body: a dueling self, according to Nimoy. It's loosely inspired by Aristophanes' theory of soulmates — that we humans were once double-sided creatures and, split apart by an angry Zeus, now wander the Earth looking for our other halves.

With the help of a Massachusetts studio, Nimoy recruited 100 random strangers from the streets of Northampton and asked them to reveal their other halves — or "secret selves": A CEO with an internal wizard, an Episcopal priest with a dark side, a newspaper editor with mad-scientist aspirations.

While the aesthetic is oddly 1990s — and the whole thing is pretty weird — what can I say? My secret self is weird. Or maybe that's not such a secret. What's yours? (Let's keep this PG-13, folks.)