Portraits of Jennifer Aniston, Leonardo DiCaprio, and More A-Listers Will Be Auctioned for COVID-19 Relief
A stellar collection of Hollywood memorabilia is headed to auction May 28, and the winning bidders will be putting their money toward a worthy cause. Famed editorial photographer Mark Seliger, known for his Rolling Stone magazine covers, shoots for GQ and Vanity Fair, Oscar-night portraits, album covers, and more, is selling 25 of his most iconic pictures to help those hit hardest by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The prints on offer will include images of a Friends-era Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lopez flanked by two fierce cheetahs, Jerry Seinfeld dressed as the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, Brad Pitt on a motorcycle, and more. Facilitated in conjunction with RAD (Red Carpet Advocacy) and Christie's, the auction will be held entirely online, and the proceeds from the sale of each print will go to the charity of the famous subject's choice.
“We just felt like it would be a great way for people to have some fun with it. To give to charity and be able to feel like they are getting something in return, which is a beautiful print,” Seliger tells AD. Of course, these prints are more than just pretty pictures—many have colorful behind-the-scenes stories which have become the stuff of Hollywood lore at this point, and which Seliger will tell in a video series he's creating in honor of the auction.
One example is Seliger's history with the band Nirvana. When shooting them for their first Rolling Stone cover in 1992, “I mentioned to Krist [Novoselic] and Dave Grohl, I said, ‘You guys can wear whatever you want, but can you ask Kurt [Cobain] not to wear any writing on his T-shirt?’ And they were like, yeah, sure,” says the veteran photographer. Lo and behold, the late singer turned up to the shoot wearing a white T-shirt with handwritten letters reading “Corporate magazines still suck.”
“I was kicking myself,” says Seliger. “Spin forward to the reaction from Rolling Stone—they were delighted. They ran it just as it was. It said more about that band [than anything else could]. And then later I photographed them for In Utero, and Kurt couldn't have been lovelier.” It is an image from this second shoot which is on auction: The now iconic photo shows Cobain's face among the heads of baby dolls, and was taken just months before his tragic death in April of 1994.
In 1993, Seliger went to L.A.’s Compton to photograph Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg on the set of a music video. He was told he'd have minimal time with the rappers. “It was really late at night and I had only gotten a few minutes with them,” the photographer recalls. “I called the publicist and said, ‘I'm really worried I’m not going to get a picture of them. It is getting really late.’ He was like, ‘Don’t worry. They are going nowhere. Dre is on house arrest.’ And if you look at it you can see an ankle bracelet on him.” That photo will also be up for auction.
With countless stories like these, Seliger is a sort of de facto Hollywood historian, but since the pandemic hit, he's turned his lens on the empty streets of New York City, producing a photo essay for Vanity Fair. “The first or second day of the reality that we were going to be here for a bit, I just started to take walks,” he says. “I’m still shooting almost every day, I would say.... I’m just trying to capture as much information as I can during this time.”
He's been sharing what he's seen on the city streets on his Instagram with the hashtag #TheCityThatFinallySleeps, which reflects his hopeful take on the future of the Big Apple: “There is so much fear that we are fed all the time through media sources and politicians. We don't have any reference for what is going to happen, but New York is going to be fine. New York has always been fine. That's kind of the message that I wanted to capture in these photographs. There's a strength here. If anything, it just needed a little bit of a rest.”
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
