Alexi Lubomirski, the photographer who makes Hollywood look golden

Over his two-decade career, photographer Alexi Lubomirski has hung out in Bruce Springsteen’s dressing room, played cards with Brad Pitt and convinced Gwyneth Paltrow to perch on the end of a supermarket conveyor belt wearing little more than a bikini. But nothing could have prepared him for the phone call he received in November 2017, inviting him to Kensington Palace to discuss taking the official engagement photographs for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

“I thought it was a prank call from my friends,” Lubomirski says. His mother was in surgery at the time, and he was at the hospital, awaiting the surgeon’s call. Meanwhile, every TV monitor in every waiting room transmitted news of Meghan and Harry’s engagement. “It was a classic thing my friends would do, and my mind just couldn’t compute that it could be real.”

“Luckily I didn’t swear at them,” Lubomirski says with a smile from across a table at Claridge’s ArtSpace Café. He’s in London to promote The Sittings 2003-2023, a new book of 113 portraits, some of which appear in an exhibition downstairs. He flips through his images of royals and film stars, which are united by what he describes as “relatable elegance”, and by a kind of golden, eminently flattering lighting that enhances some of the world’s most closely watched figures — none of which would be possible if Lubomirski weren’t so adept at putting his subjects at ease.

“Alexi is legendarily charming and thoughtful,” says Lydia Slater, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar UK. “He’s not in pursuit of edginess or controversy. He wants everyone to look like the best version of themselves, which is why people are so happy to work with him.”

Days after the initial phone call from Kensington Palace, Lubomirski and crew photographed Prince Harry and Meghan in the grounds of Windsor Castle. The photos depicted a couple looking more like Hollywood royalty than actual royalty. One picture — Meghan wrapped in Harry’s coat, her hand lifted to showcase the ring — was inspired by an image of Audrey Hepburn and husband Mel Ferrer.

The effect was more intimate and less posed than previous royal engagement photographs, and the public reaction was swift and polarised — fans praised the couple’s warmth and closeness, detractors decried the high cost of Meghan’s Ralph & Russo dress. “I knew there would be a response, but I never realised it would be that much of a response,” Lubomirski says. “I think it’s because people felt like they were being invited to witness a very intimate moment.”

The couple invited Lubomirski and his wife Giada to their May 2018 wedding, and asked him to be the official photographer, a gig with even higher stakes than the engagement. At one point, with bridesmaids and pageboys running riot, Lubomirski had to beg the late Queen Elizabeth’s pardon for running late. “She looked at me and said, ‘You know, I’m not the one you need to worry about.’”

It might have helped that Lubomirski is himself a descendant of royalty. Through his father, he’s a scion of the Polish House of Lubomirski. “I don’t think they knew until Harry mentioned it to the King [then Prince Charles] during the wedding pictures. I think Harry said, ‘Oh, by the way, you know, he’s . . . ’ That was it.”

Lubomirski was born to a French-Polish father and British-Peruvian mother. He grew up between Botswana, Paris and England, and started photographing school friends as a young teenager. “The highest compliment I could get was when one of them would come to me and say, ‘My mum wants that picture, because she said that it’s the happiest I’ve looked,’” he says. “In all my work now, I want people to look their best, and think, ‘This is me, but me looking my best and happiest and most joyful and luminous.’”

After studying photography at Brighton, he put that philosophy into practice as an assistant to Mario Testino. Four years later, he went out on his own, and very quickly he was photographing Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts and Kate Winslet for cover stories in Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and Elle. Stars began requesting him for cover shoots. Requiring him, even. He says it’s because “I’m not somebody who just sees you as a still-life object. I’m a people person. Sometimes a therapist.” Of Roberts, whose billion-dollar smile is on the cover of The Sittings, he says: “Everyone who meets her is star-struck.” Of Winslet: “Every inch of her body is an acting tool. It’s amazing.”

“It’s instructive to watch him on a shoot,” Slater says. “Normally, when the subject turns up, everyone descends on them immediately, but he prefers to let them settle in, so he can introduce himself when they’re feeling more relaxed. His aim is to make the person being photographed forget that he’s got a camera in his hand, so that they let their guard down and their personalities shine out — he’s always looking for authenticity.”

Celebrity portraiture has changed dramatically since the beginning of Lubomirski’s career. In 2005, it was standard to have two, even three days to shoot a cover and a 10-page spread. Now he gets a few hours for all that, plus digital cover options and multimedia filming. “As the time for shoots has gotten shorter and shorter, the needs have gotten greater and greater,” he says. “It’s pointless fighting against the evolution of things. You’ve got to roll with it.”

There are some things he won’t roll with. Lubomirski is a committed environmentalist and vegan, and in 2019 he launched Creatives4Change, an initiative asking signatories from the worlds of fashion and entertainment to pledge to stop working with fur, feathers and exotic skins. “I never felt comfortable shooting fur, but I did it because I thought I had to,” he says, alluding to some of his earlier work. “Especially after the [royal] wedding, my visibility shot through the roof. So I started to use my platform for good.” He asked others to commit to the same, and Aniston, Winslet and fellow photographers Inez and Vinoodh have signed. So has Diane von Furstenberg, despite telling the blue-eyed photographer at the outset of his pitch, “I’m only seeing you because you’re good-looking.”

While many top-tier brands have stopped using fur completely, feathers and exotic skins remain prevalent in the luxury sector. Holding the moral high ground has cost Lubomirski certain jobs — some that were painful to lose. But he’s sanguine about it now, an attitude he attributes to his sense of “future hindsight”.

“I didn’t want to get to the end of my time in the industry with a pile of magazines and a healthy bank balance, knowing I’d done things that didn’t align ethically with me,” he says. “You’ve got to use a voice when you have it.”

‘The Sittings’ is at Claridge’s ArtSpace, London W1K 4HR, until May 17

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