Despite their protestations to the contrary, most famous people thoroughly enjoy being photographed. And in the hands of New York photographer Mark Seliger, those portraits usually become works of art.
Seliger's collection of black and white celebrity photos, In My Stairwell, has travelled the world. It's sought after by galleries and collectors, not necessarily because of the celebrities, but because of the way he makes his subjects seem normal - quirky, even.
An edited version of In My Stairwell was on display in Los Angeles recently at the W hotel in Westwood, which has an area called the White Space used primarily for avant-garde installations and exhibitions. Seliger was on hand, mingling with guests from the worlds of Los Angeles art and fashion and Hollywood.
The hors d'oeuvres and signature Gran Centario margaritas were part of the attraction. But the large black and white photos, created using a turn-of-the-century platinum palladium process that endows a rich, dramatic texture, were the centrepiece.
Despite the variety of subjects - Mikhail Baryshnikov here, Muhammad Ali there - there was a uniformity to the collection. All were shot in Seliger's stairwell, against a stark, brick wall in his pre-war New York West Village loft on Charles Street facing the Hudson river (the building was once a women's jail).
The stairwell, which used to be an elevator shaft, is topped by a 6.5-metre skylight and is now, for all intents and purposes, a miniature studio. Most of the photos were taken between 2001 and 2005 and were the subject of a coffee table book published in 2005 titled Mark Seliger: In My Stairwell.
The sameness of the background doesn't detract from the inherent interest of the shots. If anything, the different personalities bring the stairwell to life. Many of the images look as if they were shot spontaneously.