Annie Leibovitz Backed Out of Photographing Kimye Wedding

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's wedding photo.
Photo via Kim Kardashian/Instagram.

“Let me tell you something about that kiss photo that my girl put up,” Kanye West told the audience at the Cannes Lions Creativity Conference on June 17, according to Page Six. “This was pissing my girl off during the honeymoon, she was exhausted because we worked on the photo so much because Annie Leibovitz pulled out right before the wedding. I think that she was, like, scared of the idea of celebrity.”

Leibovitz, one of the most prolific and respected celebrity photographers of the last half-century, previously shot the couple for the cover of the April issue of Vogue, and was apparently the photographer of choice for West and Kim Kardashain’s Florence wedding ceremony. But, according to West, she backed out the day before the ceremony. Consequently, the couple spent much of their honeymoon photoshopping their own wedding photos. Not having Leibovitz on hand was not about to stop them from achieving that signature Leibovitz look.

“Because Annie pulled out, I was like, ‘Okay, I still want my wedding photos to look like Annie Leibovitz,’ and we sat there and worked on that photo for, like, four days because the flowers were off-color,” West explained. “Can you imagine telling someone who wants to just Instagram a photo, who’s the No. 1 person on Instagram, ‘We need to work on the color of the flower wall,’ or the idea that it’s a Givenchy dress, and it’s not about the name Givenchy, it’s about the talent that is Riccardo Tisci—and how important Kim is to the Internet.”

Ridiculous as that last claim may sound, West and Kardashian’s wedding kiss photo—with their patented “Leibovitz” filter—is the most-like photo ever posted to Instagram, with a current tally of 2.29 million likes.

[h/t Hyperallergic, Complex]


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