Mark seliger in my stairwell peter

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Originally a carriage house, the actual elevator, which was a carriage elevator and a horse elevator, was too big for us to actually be able to maneuver. So, the printing was really the 50% of the project. And with the help of BAM, we were able to cast some very unique artists that were not so mainstream. I started to photograph people up there that, you would occasionally pop into the studio for an assignment.

So we ended up taking it out and putting in a smaller elevator, and at the very top of where the cab lived, we found this beautiful North light skylight, which created the perfect natural light situation.

mark seliger in my stairwell peter

So, it was an ancillary experience of taking a subject up to the stairwell. From 2002 to 2012 he was under contract with Condé Nast Publications for GQ and Vanity Fair and has shot for numerous other magazines. From 1992 to 2002, he was Chief Photographer for Rolling Stone, during which time he shot over 188 covers for the magazine.

Mark Seliger is an American photographer noted for his portraiture. You start with a destination, but the actual technique of what the print will look like, the finished product, is the other 50% of it all, and that was very unique to how the stairwell project came together.

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Then I got this idea that I would invite artists outside of the mainstream to come visit at the stairwell and just see what that collection would look like.

I married platinum palladium printing with the process, and eventually, the collection became a book. All 75 photographs were printed with a turn-of-the-century platinum palladium photographic process, a procedure that results in a highly detailed, rich texture. Other memorable portraits include those of Tony Hawk, Richard Serra, Bill Irwin, Laurie Anderson, and Lenny Kravitz.

There were so many interesting people that walked into that stairwell, and the brick was so dense and so old, and patina, that I stumbled upon platinum-palladium printmaking. Seliger has published a number of books, including When They Came to Take My Father: Voices of the Holocaust, Physiognomy, and On Christopher Street: Transgender Stories, and his photographs are included in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

He has done advertising work for Adidas, Amazon, Anheuser-Busch, Apple, Dom Pérignon, Fila, Gap, HBO, Hourglass Cosmetics, Hulu, KITH, Lee Jeans, Levi’s, McDonald’s, Netflix, Ralph Lauren, Ray Ban, Rolex, Showtime, Sony, Universal and Viacom, among others.

The images are printed in tritone. People like Paloma Herrera and Susan Stroman, David Russell, the late Hal Willner, or Baryshnikov, Bill Irwin, and Richard Serra. He is also the lead singer of his country music band Rusty Truck.

Mark Seliger in My Stairwell

Description

The stairwell of New York photographer Mark Seliger may be unadorned, decidedly offstage, and very small, but the creativity of so many talented people jammed into one space is enormous.

And that became the little sister to the project.