Larry Fink photographed Vanity Fair’s Oscar parties for ten years, from 2000 through 2009, occupying the unusual position of an official observer whose pictures resisted the conventions of official Hollywood imagery. The Vanities: Hollywood Parties 2000–2009 gathers his view of a social arena built around celebrity, beauty, wealth, and access, but its real subject is the behavior produced by that arena: the gestures, glances, and uneasy intervals that emerge when public figures are momentarily at leisure.

Fink’s direct flash does not simply illuminate famous faces. It fixes expressions and encounters at the instant when composure becomes uncertain, turning the party into a dense field of social exchange. Entourages press close; attention shifts through the room; glamour coexists with watchfulness. The atmosphere can suggest a contemporary court, complete with rank, display, and proximity to power, yet Fink approaches it with the alertness of a documentary photographer rather than the deference of a publicity portraitist.

By spanning a decade, the book allows recurring rituals of Hollywood self-presentation to be read across time rather than as isolated event photographs. Individual identities remain important, but the accumulation redirects attention toward the party as a system—one in which recognition, performance, and anxiety continually overlap. Texts by Luc Sante, Ash Carter, and Fink provide additional perspectives on the photographs and their setting.

Published by Schirmer/Mosel in 2011, this 138-page hardcover presents its text in English and German. For a serious photobook collection, its interest lies in the sustained collision between commissioned access and an independent documentary eye. It is both a record of a particular decade in celebrity culture and a close study of how status appears in posture, expression, and the charged space between people.