“So much glamour, so much glitz, so much haute couture and, above all, star power. You go in there at five in the afternoon with a high and the high continues until three or four in the morning. For someone, like me, who likes nothing more than to mingle with movie stars, the Vanity Fair party is nirvana. ‘Hi nicole. Hello rene. Hello, Anjelica. Oh please, there’s Charlize Theron, with her Oscar! Present it to me.’”
This is how the late writer Dominick Dunne, one of the star contributors to Vanity Fair magazine, described what it meant for him to attend what is considered the party, in capital letters, of Oscar night. And he knew the Hollywood environment very well; place where he lived for several years, he produced films, raised his children – who also dedicated themselves to cinema – and frequented actors and actresses, such as his beloved Elizabeth Taylor.
However, as Dunne explained in his day, the thing about Oscar night is something superlative: there is simply everyone there. Divos, divas, directors, producers, singers, fashion couples, models… The sensations of the moment and the promises of the future. Men and women who seem from other worlds, getting out of their limousines, impeccably dressed, with their hair and makeup, smiling at the hundreds of fans and photographers and answering the journalists’ questions. Elegant, vain and beautiful stars to die for. Stars having fun, delighted to spend a few hours drinking champagne with their peers at the most exclusive party of the year.
Fortunately, the most common of us mortals can now have access to what happens behind the scenes of that night thanks to a book: Vanity Fair: Oscar Night Sessions (ed. Abrams). A volume that presents portraits taken during the last ten years at the most glamorous event in Hollywood. The author of them is the photographer Mark Seliger, to whom in 2014 the then editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter, proposed an idea. It consisted, as Seliger himself explains: “In setting up an Instagram-type photographic studio, next to the party, to publish the images on the Internet that same night.”
At first, Selinger found it a bit of a strange idea (among other things, Instagram had only come out four years ago). “Honestly, I couldn’t imagine it would work. But, as always, I trusted Graydon’s vision.” And he did well, because the idea was a success. It required, however, conscientious teamwork, almost a Hollywood production. Without forgetting the development of what is now known as a pop-up studio (an ephemeral photography studio), located in a parking lot, next to the party headquarters, in Beverly Hills. There, after passing through thick velvet curtains and being entertained with a drink, the guests pose. This has been done for the last ten years, with the exception of 2020, when, due to covid, the event, like so many others, was suspended.
Seliger still remembers with a bit of shock the first time he carried out the assignment, in 2014: “Everything happened so quickly that I couldn’t know if we had done anything good,” he writes in the book’s prologue. He does remember how, at the end, early in the morning, he told his producer that he did not plan to do it “ever again.” However, when, now more rested and with the photos in hand, he saw the portrait he had made of Lupita Nyong’o, with her Oscar for Twelve Years a Slave and “resplendent with emotion,” he knew that, at least For its part, that project had no turning back.
And this book, with more than two hundred color photographs, is the proof. Graydon Carter’s idea was picked up in 2017 by the current director of Vanity Fair, Radhika Jones, perfecting it. “She evolved the style, asking us to encourage color and create a space in which the models could also perform,” explains Seliger. Thus, those pop-up sessions, as Radikha Jones writes: “They already have archival quality. They are a testament to what Hollywood is and where it is going. “Of the new faces that we celebrate, of the legends that we venerate and of the memory of those who are no longer here.”
Without a doubt, moviegoers will enjoy these portraits of statuette winners, leading actors and actresses, directors, musicians, singers, models and powerful couples. Stars, in short. In the glossy pages of the book, names such as Lady Gaga, Robert De Niro, Spike Lee, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Timothée Chalamet, Scarlett Johansson, Gal Gadot, Emma Stone, Anthony Hopkins, Viola Davis, Anjelica Huston and everyone who He is part of the old and new Hollywood aristocracy.
There are also foreign talents, such as Pedro Almodóvar, Alfonso Cuarón, Taika Waititi, Javier Bardem and Antonio Banderas, with whom Hollywood has always been very generous. Without forgetting the young stars, like Billie Eilish and the stars of Euphoria. The images are also an example of the progress of racial and cultural diversity in the world of cinema, which also has no turning back.
But, in particular, as Dominick Dunne would say, Seliger’s photographs are a testimony to an exquisite, armored and deliciously frivolous night, in which champagne, greetings, praise and gossip abound. A night in which movie stars are more so than ever, although, as revealed in the book, some keep their high heels in the freezer to prevent foot pain and others consume liquor rather sparingly. As in any good party, naturally.
