If, say, the subject is a reclusive movie actor known to the public only as a succession of characters on the screen, then "access" may be the only way to find out what he or she is "really like".
Namuth focused on his rapport with his subjects, getting many reclusive figures such as Clyfford Still to agree to be photographed.
MICHAEL JACKSON and J. D. Salinger would seem to have had little in common beyond being famous, reclusive (to different degrees) and the subject of much speculation about their personal lives.
Ramírez is one of the Big Three of twentieth-century outsiders, along with the institutionalized Swiss Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) and the reclusive Chicago janitor Henry Darger (1892-1973), both subjects of memorable retrospectives at the Folk Art Museum.
But Mr. Guetta became the unintentional subject of his own movie when the reclusive British artist Banksy decided he would take over editing and production duties.
Houellebecq, a reclusive writer whose eccentric work and lifestyle are the subject of intense literary and social gossip, argued in his defence last month that criticising a religion did not mean he was insulting its followers.
But the only person with any clues about his disappearance is the fearsome and reclusive Swenson, who lives with the Lakashi tribe, the subjects of her research on fertility.
On the subject of Mr Bin Laden, the Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Omar, said he refused to give in to US pressure to surrender the suspected terrorist.
A show of Gwen John's work is currently showing at the Barber Institute of Fine Art, Birmingham (0121-414 7333), to 21 September The Artist Gwen John (1879-1939) is a reclusive, introspective, obsessional talent in the modernist mould, doing the same subject over and over, pursuing small differences, a Morandi of the solitary female figure.
