Mark Mahaney’s portrait captures the power and madness of Elon Musk, whose elevation from tech titan to democracy’s most dangerous private citizen mirrors a government fracturing under his influence.
The image effectively captures the mendacity and malice of Musk. However, I must ask —was this intentional? Has Mr. Mahaney spoken publicly about the session?
Hi Drake. From what I can tell, Mahaney has said very little about the shoot, and I wouldn't expect him to. He is one of the elite portrait photographers and, characteristic of his trade, he leaves the photos to speak for himself.
Another image from the shoot leads TIME’s article about the POY choice:
"I photographed Elon Musk for the cover of Time Magazine in December - that was very interesting. The whole shoot was done in under ten minutes, which brought me back to what I learned through assisting, working under pressure and dealing with challenging personalities. But even if I had been given a couple of hours to take pictures of him, I would have been happy coming away with the same images. The universal response was that, whether people like him or not, they saw part of him in those images that was different from what they had ever seen of him before. So in that way, I feel like it was a success."
Great video on a striking portrait of one of the most influential (for better or worse) individuals of our time. Mark Mahaney is one of my inspirations, and this shot is definitely one that stood out to me when it was first published.
Terrific portrait--the first thing I thought of when I saw this was Alfred Eisenstaedt's portrait of Alfred Goebbels in the garden of the Carlton Hotel (1933). The second was Francis Bacon's portraits and heads.
Wow, Karsten. Your comment makes me pine to post photos in Substack's newsletter comment threads! Here, at least, is the link to the twisted Goebbels death stare at RareHistoricalPhoto.com. And the caption is priceless:
"Goebbels smiled at him until he learned that Eisenstaedt was Jewish – a moment Eisenstaedt captured in this photo."
The image effectively captures the mendacity and malice of Musk. However, I must ask —was this intentional? Has Mr. Mahaney spoken publicly about the session?
Hi Drake. From what I can tell, Mahaney has said very little about the shoot, and I wouldn't expect him to. He is one of the elite portrait photographers and, characteristic of his trade, he leaves the photos to speak for himself.
Another image from the shoot leads TIME’s article about the POY choice:
https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2021-elon-musk-choice/
Mahaney’s Insta about the shoot. It’s just the alternate photo that led the TIME article:
https://www.instagram.com/mahaney_mark/p/CXd9igul__Z/elon-musk-for-time-magazines-person-of-the-yearphotographed-last-week-in-boca-ch/?img_index=1
Mahaney’s Insta of the photo we discussed. Posted one year later without comment:
https://www.instagram.com/mahaney_mark/p/ClrE5RyOsk6/
Mahaney has been commissioned to photograph Musk multiple times. This, for example, appeared in The Atlantic in 2023:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/09/elon-musk-walter-isaacson-biography/675277/
He did say this about the shoot in an interview with The Ravestijn Gallery:
https://www.theravestijngallery.com/viewing-room/13-in-conversation-with-mark-mahaney-b.-1979-usa/?t
"I photographed Elon Musk for the cover of Time Magazine in December - that was very interesting. The whole shoot was done in under ten minutes, which brought me back to what I learned through assisting, working under pressure and dealing with challenging personalities. But even if I had been given a couple of hours to take pictures of him, I would have been happy coming away with the same images. The universal response was that, whether people like him or not, they saw part of him in those images that was different from what they had ever seen of him before. So in that way, I feel like it was a success."
Great video on a striking portrait of one of the most influential (for better or worse) individuals of our time. Mark Mahaney is one of my inspirations, and this shot is definitely one that stood out to me when it was first published.
Terrific portrait--the first thing I thought of when I saw this was Alfred Eisenstaedt's portrait of Alfred Goebbels in the garden of the Carlton Hotel (1933). The second was Francis Bacon's portraits and heads.
Wow, Karsten. Your comment makes me pine to post photos in Substack's newsletter comment threads! Here, at least, is the link to the twisted Goebbels death stare at RareHistoricalPhoto.com. And the caption is priceless:
"Goebbels smiled at him until he learned that Eisenstaedt was Jewish – a moment Eisenstaedt captured in this photo."
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/goebbels-eisenstaedt-1933/