Annie Leibovitz’s photos of Ketanji Brown Jackson at Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial have been met with outrage on Twitter. A concerned user tweeted about the focus of one of the photos, saying, “We can’t even see [Jackson’s] face. It’s like Abe Lincoln is the focus. My Interpretation of this photo is Abe freeing slaves, in turn leading to this moment… which I feel is really what Annie was thinking and it has taken away from KBJ’s huge achievement.” Another wrote, “Do you see [Jackson] or do your eyes go to Lincoln immediately? If I didn’t know she was in the photo I wouldn’t be looking for her.”
One person posted their own version of the Leibovitz photos made in “less than five minutes” to make Jackson’s face brighter and more visible, saying the choice to keep the images darker must have been “on purpose.” Another wanted to know why a Black female photographer could have been chosen, and tweeted, “This is horrible. How did you manage the 1). Poor lighting of this Black woman, 2). De-center her in her own narrative, and 3). Make a dead white man the center of a Black woman’s success and narrative.” And one person tweeted at Vogue to not use Leibovitz for pictures of Black women, writing, “She doesn’t light them properly and allows them no grace or beauty, only stereotypical visual narratives of BW as either ‘strong’ or beleaguered. Enough already.”
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