It was a music-magazine photo shoot like any other — “My brother and I posed for a picture wearing the same green shirts and then another wearing fake mustaches,” remembers Eleanor Friedberger, singer for Brooklyn-based brother-sister indie-rock duo the Fiery Furnaces — when photographer Chris Buck made a special request: “He asked us if we’d be willing to stand behind a curtain while he took a picture of it,” says Friedberger. “We said, ‘Yes. Why not?’ ” Buck earns a living shooting celebrities for magazines (including New York), but while on assignment over the past decade, he’s cultivated a sideline in high-concept hide-and-seek, snapping photos of his famous subjects secreted behind objects. Among the stars you definitely won’t see in his new book, Presence: The Invisible Portrait (out now from Kehrer Verlag), are Jon Hamm, Cindy Sherman, Snoop Dogg, and William Shatner — but, as witnesses swear in signed affidavits, they’re all hiding somewhere within Buck’s frame.
