For the sixth and final volume of W Magazine for 2024, Australian actress Nicole Kidman is featured in new photographs by New York artist Robert Longo, recreating his iconic Men in the Cities series from the early 1980s.

Photos of Kidman grace the front cover of W Magazine’s “Art Issue” as well as illustrating an interview with the actress about her latest film Babygirl, directed by Dutch actress and writer Halina Reijn who recently received critical acclaim for Bodies, Bodies, Bodies in 2022. Kidman won the Best Actress award at this year’s Venice Film Festival for her performance in Babygirl, which is set to be released on Christmas Day. It was during the early stages of the movie’s production that Kidman joined Longo for the photoshoot.

W Magazine’s Art Issue Cover (2024). Image courtesy of Lede Company.

Robert Longo, an American multidisciplinary artist who originally studied sculpture, is best known for the iconic photo shoot taken on the roof of his New York apartment building. The Men in the Cities series was captured between 1977 and 1983 and shows figures in business attire—including the artist Cindy Sherman, with whom Longo was in a romantic relationship, and a young Larry Gagosian—in contorted, emotionally-extreme poses, some caused by Longo throwing tennis balls at them during the shoot. Longo later translated a selection of images from the series into hyper-realistic charcoal and graphite drawings.

Nicole Kidman for W Magazine, photographed by Robert Longo. Image courtesy of Lede Company.

True to the original series, Kidman wore minimalistic office wear. During the shoot Longo clarified what the wardrobe needed to be “White shirts, black ties, skinny suits, black heels. No patterns, frou-frou, tassels, polka dots, bags, or jewelry—none of that shit. It has to be really elegant and clean.” The workwear wardrobe for the shoot is particularly apt for Kidman during this period of promotion for Babygirl, which is an erotic thriller set around an intense office relationship.

For the shoot, Longo once again shot on a Manhattan roof top, on which Kidman danced abstractly, aiming for an intensity of emotion without focus on aesthetically pleasing posing. In the accompanying interview this abandon of vanity in the name of art is compared to an incident in Kidman’s early career when she turned down the opportunity to feature in a student film of the director Jane Campion, who went on to directThe Piano (1993) and The Power of the Dog (2021), because she “didn’t want to wear a shower cap in the film and not look pretty”.

Nicole Kidman for W Magazine, photographed by Robert Longo. Image courtesy of Lede Company.

Longo gave specific instructions to the team involved in the shoot: “Not balletic, not fashion, not posed. The movements have to be slightly awkward, almost psychotic. The body has to be stretched to the point of impossibility. No smiling.” In addition to Men in the Cities, Longo has a wealth of directorial experience, having directed the 1995 film Johnny Mnemonic starring a young Keanu Reaves as well as music videos for New Order and R.E.M. Despite other successes, it is certainly Men in the Cities for which Longo is best known, telling W “If you’e lucky enough to get into art history books, you only get one image … I am in art history books, but just for ‘Men in the Cities’, not all the other stuff I did my whole life”. A retrospective of his work opened in Vienna’s Albertina Museum this September.

The whole process was bizarre, to re-create this stuff,” Longo told W Magazine, adding that Kidman “really got it”.

“There’s one picture where she’s just walking and turning. It’s all attitude—just so beautiful. It’s amazing how much meaning can come across in a gesture.”

Nicole Kidman for W Magazine, photographed by Robert Longo. Image courtesy of Lede Company.