Jimmy Hoffa, Lake Orion, Michigan

Neil Selkirk

1975, printed 1978 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

This portrait of Jimmy Hoffa, former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was made at the influential union leader’s Michigan lake house just a few months before he disappeared without a trace on July 30, 1975. Framed within a tight space in his modest living room, Hoffa, with a cigarette in one hand and a phone receiver to his ear, appears darkly powerful yet trapped by circumstances beyond his control. A highly accomplished portraitist and master printer for the Estate of Diane Arbus, Selkirk is known for his incisive photographs of politicians, writers, and public figures, including George Will, Don DeLillo, and Primo Levi.

Artist

Neil Selkirk

Date

1975, printed 1978

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2016