It can get awfully hot inside the latex fish head, and you can't see too much. But people can't see you either, and if the fish head's been cooled for a few minutes before you put it on, it might even be refreshing. The really fun part, though, is what happens after you take it off.

In August 2002, we did a project called Fish and Compliments, in which about 178 people posed for us wearing only the fish head. At the same time as we took the film photos you'll see on the following pages, we also took a Polaroid of each person. Then we wrote one specific and honest compliment about each one's body on the Polaroid and gave the Polaroid and compliment to our models.

We figured that Fish and Compliments would be a way to address physical beauty without the complicating factor of facial beauty; to do something related to "The Floating World," the theme of the 2002 Burning Man festival (where we took these photos); to shore up the body image of people around us by helping them to understand exactly why they're as gorgeous as they are; and to generate some classic Surrealist images. We didn't realize how well it would work out, or how happy it would make the people in the fish heads. But we were glad to find out.

We're not going to tell you what compliments we gave our models. That's left for you to decide for yourself. It's not difficult; they're all beautiful. So are you.

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If you'd prefer not to see 178 nude people wearing a fish mask, please stop here. Otherwise ...

All photographs are copyright 2002 Fish and Compliments. Please do not distribute them elsewhere.