Shut Up, and Listen

Nude New York, New York April 18, 2010

In his new book, Listen (Rizzoli), GQ photographer Mark Seliger sends the hair and makeup people packing and shoots stark, exquisite photos that have nothing to do with celebrity, but everything to do with photography
BY MARK HEALYPHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK SELIGER

Madame Simon Residence, France May 13, 2003

Over the last twenty-five or so years, Mark Seliger's photos have become an inextricable part of American magazines, shooting for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and, of course, GQ, where he's been a Contributing Photographer since 2002. Seliger has shot thousands of portraits and hundreds of covers—many of which will be studied, celebrated, and badly imitated for decades to come—and he's captured just about every celebrity you can name. Really. But how he got here required quite a creative ramble—one that started, as many of photo journeys have, with a Pentax K1000 and a community dark room and somehow led to cover photos of Leo DiCaprio and Jennifer Aniston.

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Bridge Footings Bayonne, New Jersey February 16, 2010

Dennis New York, New York June 26, 2009

In the book, Listen, Seliger seeks out the roots of that journey, as he says, "Allowing myself to discover the reason why I started photography in the first place." Every photo in the book is black and white and printed using a platinum/palladium process that is the book's true muse. As Seliger says in an interview with his longtime friend and collaborator, GQ Design Director Fred Woodward, "The crazy thing is that the platininum/palladium process is as important as the taking of the photograph.

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Nude New York, New York June 26, 2009

Merce Cunningham New York, New York January 23, 2009

Awareness of the process helps me decide what to photograph." So, Listen includes nothing and no one (except for Mikhail Baryshnikov) with a publicist: a series of nudes, New York landmarks, decomposing birds, people with the kind of primativist piercings you don't soon forget. How Seliger arrived there isn't important as what he makes of the destination. "Something always leads you to where you need to go," he says, "and then you've got to perform."

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Central Park New York, New York January 28th, 2010