One of the best parts about aging, as an artist and a woman, is finding untapped confidence and reaching the absolute heights of your technical abilities and means of expression. Unless you are photographer Annie Leibovitz, whose recent Vogue cover shoot with actor Anne Hathaway, in support of her forthcoming A24 film Mother Mary, has been met with vitriolic criticism over its lack of basic ability to light her subject correctly. Or unless you are Hathaway, whose self-reinvention, as touted on the cover, seems to include withholding her signature fan-favorite smile. Between Anne and Annie, according to the armchair art directors of the internet, there is basically nothing lighting up the room correctly.
“Someone behind the camera needs to retire,” commented fashion-Grammer Alexandre Feldhaus, on a preview image released on Vogue’s Instagram, ahead of the August issue’s July 15 newsstand release, which features Hathaway in Givenchy as a pastiche of a John Singer Sargent painting, “Madame X” (1883–84), seen hanging in the background. While the art is well-referenced and Hathaway’s poised expressions successfully echo the mood of the eponymous subject, the foreground lighting is in a death struggle with the background, including Sargent’s painting. Hathaway appears ethereally washed-out in cool blue lighting, the color balance of which turns the warmer painting light a sickly green.
“Can someone pls get Annie a new colorist,” asks digital creator Liam Haehnle. “What the hell is going on with the edit on these images.”
Art references paired with selections from Sarah Burton’s March 2025 debut runway collection for Givenchy keep coming, with an image of Hathaway standing in front of Franz Kline’s “Mahoning” (1956) at the Whitney Museum in New York. The composition is arresting, the pose is powerful, and the juxtaposition between painting and model is compelling — but seeming to comprehend that the pictures from the Sargent shoot at the Met were too dark and cool, Leibovitz over-corrects by making this one much too warm. What should have been a high-contrast vision of black-and-white is instead a yellowish miasma — the kind of diffuse and ominous light that foretells storm’s-a-comin’ in tornado country.
But the worst, by far, is a second image from the Sargent shoot, featuring Hathaway sitting cross-legged in front of two smaller Sargent paintings, wearing a top composed entirely of giant gemstones. The top is doing Hathaway no favors — it looks like if you shrank her down to the size of The Borrowers, and then she borrowed hunks of costume jewelry from the Big People, and then fashioned it into weird ad hoc chain mail for some reason. You can see the hard flash reflecting off facets of her be-borrowed gemstones, throwing her careless bedhead hairstyle into upsetting relief, and also causing the frames of the two paintings behind her (whose subjects at least had the decency to be shirtless) to cast huge shadows.
In fairness, I am a woman of a certain age who is basically the same as Hathaway’s, and I have very much embraced the “We Do Not Care” summer. For all the hate the photos are receiving, there are plenty of commenters who love them, and Hathaway, on her worst day, still is more beautiful than me trying my absolute best. I am not here to tell a woman to smile or wear a bra, no matter how harsh the lighting or exacting the expectations. But it perhaps does bear mentioning that for people of even more advanced age, cataracts can sometimes affect color vision, and maybe someone — not saying who — should look into finding a good ophthalmologist.
I think the photos are very interesting but I am not looking at them as a fashion “seller”. To me (I am a painter), they are compositions, and, as such, have brought into consideration how to construct the various elements, including objects, environment, color and light. Is it the best way to feature the fashion statement or Anne Hathaway? I think that’s the issue here; it’s 2 different perspectives. I trust that Annie was very aware of the colors and lighting she was using and why, to create her artistic expression. Vogue obviously accepted them, or they wouldn’t have been released for us to criticize.
LOL colors were way off before I had cataract surgery a few years ago, and everything was sort of dim and cloudy. Looks like Liebowitz is due for an appt. with her ophthalmologist…
Perhaps Liebowitz is making both an art-historical AND an art-criticism reference. The critics complained about Madame X at the time, and for many of the same reasons they are complaining about the Liebowitz/Hathaway portrait. The Times said of what we now recognize as one of Sargent’s greatest paintings, “”Sargent is below his usual standard this year… The pose of the figure is absurd, and the bluish coloring atrocious.” The artist often knows better than we do.
So easy to be a critic! So easy to be witty! And please, as a woman of an even more “uncertain age” that phrase should not be seeing print in the 21st century. Given the intense and thorough creative chain of command at Vogue, to think that these photographs are color corrected in anyway other than Leibovitz intended is critical conceit at its highest. Brava Annie! The golden hued Whitney photo especially bothers me. And I am so grateful you had the nerve to do that. Bother is good.
Annie Leibovitz knows exactly what she’s doing. The color in the portrait in front of “Madame X” — transitioning from slightly golden to slightly green to slightly blue across the background with subtle references to pick skin both in “Madame X” and in Anne Hathaway takes skill and knowledge about color. It’s OK to not “like” it.
I think it’s telling that Leibovitz created a series that disturbs us, makes us uncomfortable, makes us wonder why she’s making the choices she’s making and what story she wants to tell… and folks respond with saying there is something wrong with her eyes or her technique. Nothing wrong with either. We just don’t like what she’s showing us.
I love these pictures – and mostly for the reasons some of you don’t like them. In an age of perfect perfectibility it’s interesting when somebody decides not to make all the little adjustments that would turn it into just another perfect picture. I especially like the dynamism that the asymmetry produces.
Annie knows what she’s doing and so does the digital tech and the group of professional assistants that assist her…she’s not dragging the lights around or capturing the images So no, you might dislike the images but it has nothing to do with Annie’s age or eyes…This article reeks of ageism. It’s a mean spirited article and has no value. Wondering why Hyperallergic published it.
Loving Anne’s photo in front of Madame X. What a beauty!
I think Leibovitz knew exactly what she was doing, and if Hathaway had issues with the images, they would have been “color corrected” or they would not have run. This writer’s assertion that she “does not care” is belied by the her criticism: “I am not here to tell a woman to smile or wear a bra, no matter how harsh the lighting or exacting the expectations…(then don’t). “But it perhaps does bear mentioning that for people of even more advanced age, cataracts can sometimes affect color vision, and maybe someone — not saying who — should look into finding a good ophthalmologist” Really? Ageist much? Missing the point of the images much? This is completely off base for Hyperallergic. How did it ever make it into print?
I think they are really poor photos, end of story. I’m a painter, artist, care about composition, care about there not being “standards” and that art is meant to convey a larger commentary than fashion photo rights and wrongs, and maybe Liebowitz was breaking those down for us, but at the end of the day, if I didn’t know, I’d say these look like just poorly constructed, poorly lit, not well thought out and just uninteresting photos. Whatever – at the end of the day, that’s also my subjective opinion and Brian Eno or anyone else can love them for a whole other set of reasons. I think Vogue is utterly boring anyhow, and when the photos are more classic high-fashion I find them stupid looking. So maybe these are just honest and raw and Liebowitz is saying: f-you consumerism. Ok. I like them.
Please tell me what is ‘correct’ lighting for a fashion shoot meant to be? What a ridiculous line of criticism – frankly, nothing more than disguised misogyny and agism.
These are gorgeous! Photography that becomes a painting — what a brilliant expansion of the medium. Brava Annie Leibowitz and Anne Hathaway.
Leibovitz is certainly not known for social commentary, but these read to me as grim images appropriate to a time of high anxiety and in stark contrast to the celebration of wealth and privilege in the Sargents.