i love this photo, #21

(Salman Rushdie, 1999) © chris buck

I love this photo by the photographer Chris Buck. On his website, Buck tells the backstory to some of his wonderful portraits. About this shot of Salman Rushdie, he writes:

"When I was given this assignment, I was asked not to tell anyone about it. When you're told something like that, the first thing you want to do is tell people. But I couldn't, and I thought about it as a sort of test to see if I could not tell anyone. My parents, girlfriend, office manager, nobody, I didn't tell anybody. I didn't know how seriously to take the fatwa. What if I told someone and they told someone and they told someone... and I have him posing, looking out a window and someone shot him in the face? It wouldn't look good."