Although some of Nimoy’s photography can be seen in various museum collections, this is Nimoy’s first solo show at a major museum.

In an interview with A.V. Club, Nimoy explained how he chose the subjects for Secret Selves. “I came across a story that comes down to us from ancient Greece; supposedly, Aristophanes, the playwright/philosopher, was at one of Sophocles’ symposia and posited a fanciful explanation for human angst, anxiety, and emotional discomfort. He said that at one time, humans were double people, with four arms, four legs, and two heads, attached back-to-back to one another in all the various combinations of male and female. So when man became powerful and arrogant, the gods were angry and sent Zeus to solve the problem, which he did by taking a big sword and splitting everybody in two, sending them on their separate paths. And ever since then, said Aristophanes, humans have been searching for the other, lost part of themselves, to make themselves feel whole again, to reintegrate.

“I was struck by that idea, that many of us have another side to us that we are not in touch with, or that we do not get a chance to explore or present. We present a certain aspect of ourselves, but there are other unexplored, or hidden, or lost parts to ourselves. So with that in mind, I gave that story to my gallerist in Northampton, Massachusetts, a very active and creative guy in the community, and I told him “I want to photograph a lot of people—try to round up a hundred if you can—and ask them to come as their secret selves.”

Nimoy chose one hundred people and each subject was asked “Why do you think you are?” The photographs are a result of each person’s “alternate identity,” which include identities such as Superman, a wizard, a dancer, a violinist and more. Nimoy explained that “They all came with their own story. Each of them had written a brief statement about who they were in their obvious daily lives, and what their hidden or secret fantasy self was all about. They came with their own wardrobe and their own props or whatever.”

Last year, Nimoy spent two sixteen-hour days shooting portraits of people who had answered his public invitation to share their hidden selves.

Of the ninety-five who were photographed, Nimoy chose twenty-five of them for an exhibit, Who Do You Think You Are, that will go on display next summer in Massachusetts.

“The idea was to invite people to reveal their secret selves, the self they wish to be or the self they hide from the world,” explained Nimoy. “There was a measure of bravery in this by everyone involved. I had no idea what to expect. Some of the people walked in with these amazing stories, stories you couldn’t anticipate or make up.”

The twenty-five images can be seen here. (Not all images are “worksafe.”) There are photos of wizards, a man who would be Superman, a gay rabbi wearing a leather vest who used the occasion to publicly announce that he was gay, a forest spirit, woman with a chainsaw expressing her unrecognized inner masculine power, a “shy whore,” boxer and a “forest spirit” whose desire was to “avoid war, strife and violence of all kinds, and be part of nature.”

The photography reflects Northampton, and Nimoy wonders how different it would have been had the submission process been different or had the shoot be done in another city. “It would be interesting to see what would happen if you solicited people, sought them out instead of making a public invitation,” said Nimoy. “It might be a difficult process, an ordeal, or it might be explosive. What would you get if you did this in a different community, such as Los Angeles? Would it be totally different? I don’t know the answers to these questions.”

And what is Nimoy’s own “secret self?” “I have no secrets left,” said Nimoy. “I revealed it all long ago.”

On Halloween night, Nimoy will be at the Santa Monica Museum of Art for a one-night exhibition of selected photographs from the project.