Annie Leibovitz took photographs of the president and first lady of Ukraine, recently published in Vogue Magazine. Because this is 2022, the photos immediately attracted criticism from the Left pushing an agenda of political correctness.
Adam Broomberg, on the faculty of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague, wrote:
“This is everything that is wrong with the world and how dangerously photography can intersect with it. The idea of a conflict zone as a backdrop for an @annieleibovitz shoot for @voguemagazine is vile. Posing the “First Lady” against a destroyed airplane in which people presumably died.”
Crediting a few photos as representing “everything that is wrong with the world” might be a bit broad-brushed, and the airplane may have been destroyed in a hangar with nobody dying. But we should not let facts distort Broomberg’s opinion. He didn’t.
Personally, I found the photos moving, especially one in which the “First Lady” is foreground facing the camera and the president of Ukraine in the background looking away. The photo makes clear Zelensky’s wife is very much impacted by his role and herosim (they could be living in London!). It offers an expression of their cause and sacrifice, which I think has value.
“(It is wrong to depict) a politician as an iconic hero without any nuanced understanding of their function and complicity in this 155 day old brutal war. A superficial glossy depiction of a hero in the Hollywood mould,” Broomberg wrote.
Is Mr. Broomberg saying that to be created and offered, any art must provide “nuanced understanding?” That’s hilariously absurd. No art captures all nuances. All art; photos, music, poetry, sculpture, and any description, is an abstraction of whole truth.
There are many photos of the war Russia committed upon Ukraine that provide “nuanced understanding” of grim realities and horrors.
“Somehow deep down I think these pictures confirm our need for for a binary understanding of the world as good and evil, for an outdated model of male heroes with their female enablers.”
Broomberg needs to reach deeper down still. It’s his biases that filter these photos into a “binary… outdated model.” Each Leibovitz photo added to my understanding of the world, pushed the binary of “good and evil” further open to the experience of war, added another "thousand words" to my knowledge of what she chose to photograph.
Finally, Broomberg presents a common authoritarian trope of the left, that these beautiful photographs feed my “toxic heteronormative patriarchal ideas that make war inevitable.” Aside from the name calling, he says it’s not Putin and not Russia, but my appreciation for Leibovitz’s art and glimpses she offers, that are responsible for the war in Ukraine.
Thank god art does not depend on criticism by art professors, nor our freedom upon their demand that we all agree on what art is supposed to portray. For a “nuanced understanding” of issues, I'll turn to other sources.
While I found the photographs not the best PR for a nation at war, they are excellent depictions of the people and circumstance by a talented photographer. We are torn by Zelensky as a heroic figure tainted by his benefactor oligarch Kolomoisky known to be a corrupt nationalist. But associations don't always mean Zelensky himself can't be bringing better government to Ukraine.
But I do see "outdated model of male heroes with their female enablers" somewhat offensive. Who can see inside their partnership? I guess I'm not sophisticated to understand "heteronormative patriarchal ideas" when Putin for whatever reason decided to take control of Ukraine. Zelensky seemed to try to avoid a war but not at the cost of much of Ukraine and the citizens have agreed supporting him with their very lives.
The photographs themselves are incongruent with a nation at war. The art is great with great figures in an ugly setting for contrast. And given Zelensky's acting background as a celebrity maybe good PR but at another time.
Christ, what a douchebag.