Robert Altman, Film Director, New York City
Neil Selkirk American, born England
Not on view
Born in London, Selkirk moved to New York City in 1970 to work for Hiro (Yasuhiro Wakabayashi), the fashion and still-life photographer. He also studied personally with Diane Arbus and is arguably her most renowned student. Selkirk is known primarily as a portraitist and is lauded for his intense, but intimate studies of celebrated authors, filmmakers, statesmen, and athletes for commercial magazine clients including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Interview, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Wired.
Selkirk made this portrait of Altman--the director of Mash, Nashville, among many other American film classics--for the short-lived magazine, The Movies. Commissioned by art director, Marvin Israel, with the suggestion "I want you to consider concealment," Selkirk fashioned a neo-noir study of the director who he posed mostly in the dark in rented car in New York City. To create a tinge of paparazzo journalism style, Selkirk used a slow shutter speed and an electronic flash (trained only on the rear view mirror) to suggest that Altman was escaping in a fast moving car.
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