Against a neutral
background, without props, John Coplans posed naked while his assistant
photographed his body, always without his face or head, to remove any
references to specific identity. Eventually Coplans developed a system that
allowed him to direct his own poses by watching a live feed on a TV connected
to a video camera.

 “I don’t
know what happens, but when I pose for one of these photographs, I become
immersed in the past. It is akin to Alice falling through the looking glass…I
am somewhere else, another person in another life…I never know from one moment
to the next if this power to time-travel will dry up.”