MARK SELIGER SHOT THE SOPRANOS AS SCENES, NOT PORTRAITS

Snow falls on a city street in Mark Seliger's 2001 Rolling Stone photographs of The Sopranos cast, and a man in a long black coat stands with a woman at his shoulder, a dark car behind them, neither one looking at the camera like an actor at a press day. Seliger shot the cast and creator David Chase for issue 865, dated March 29, 2001, and he had them play scenes instead of posing, so 25 years later the pictures still read like stills from an episode HBO never aired.

A Barber Chair, a Meat Locker and an Open Casket

Five frames from the shoot travel together, and each one is built like a setup with the punchline left out. A man lies back in a barber's chair under a white cape while three men stand over him, one of them in a cap and glasses. Three men in long coats hold still in a meat locker, sides of beef hanging on rails behind them.

Four women in black stand behind an open casket, one of them holding a rosary, with a white haired body laid out in front. A woman in a police cap and lingerie stands above a man stretched on a narrow iron bed in a room with peeling walls. The snow picture is the quietest and the coldest of the set.

Rolling Stone's cover lineup for the issue named Lorraine Bracco, David Chase, Dominic Chianese, Drea de Matteo, Edie Falco, James Gandolfini, Robert Iler, Michael Imperioli, Joe Pantoliano, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Tony Sirico, Aida Turturro and Steven Van Zandt. That is 12 actors and the man who wrote them, in black and white, in the rooms a viewer already associated with what happens to people on that show. Dark humor does most of the work, since nobody in the frames is doing anything except waiting.

Seliger Had 14 Years of Rolling Stone Behind Him

Mark Seliger started at Rolling Stone in 1987, became its chief photographer in 1992 and stayed through 2002, shooting 188 covers before moving to Condé Nast for GQ and Vanity Fair. Staging was already his signature by 2001. He framed Kurt Cobain with doll heads in 1993 and put a chimpanzee's hands around Tom Hanks's face in 1994, and his book Physiognomy collected the work in 1999.

The timing matched the show's peak of attention. HBO opened season three with a two hour premiere on March 4, 2001, 25 days before the issue's date, and the two episodes drew 11.26 million and 11.35 million United States viewers on the way to a 13 episode season that ended May 20. About 2,000 people went to the send off at the New York Hilton ballroom that February, and Steven Van Zandt told ABC News: "The quality keeps up this season and that makes it so exciting." Peter Bogdanovich, back that season as Dr. Melfi's psychiatrist, told the network: "It's so goddamned good. You just don't know what you're going to feel." Keith Richards was there too, and his reason was simpler: "And they play my songs, which really helps."

A cast portrait in that moment would have sold fine. Seliger's version gave the magazine something HBO's own marketing could not, because it let the actors stay in character inside a music magazine. They have since become some of the show's most recognizable promotional images.

Fashion and Rap Keep Borrowing the Family

The show's images have stayed in circulation as source material, and 2026 has been a busy year for it. In February, Yeat recreated HBO's 1999 arm in a trunk stunt with a silicone replica of his own arm weighing over 15 pounds, to promote his album ADL. That same month, Michael Imperioli led AMIRI's Spring Summer 2026 campaign, Château Amiri, California, in a double breasted pinstriped suit as a Hollywood producer.

Seliger is still shooting character studies too, 20 years after opening his 401 Projects gallery in the West Village. His Fall Winter 2026 Gucci eyewear campaign, art directed by Riccardo Zanola, puts a cast of characters inside private moments, and Gucci described it as a story without a plot. In 2001 he put 12 actors in a meat locker, a barber chair and around a casket for issue 865, and every frame came with one.