Diverse Beauty

Book excerpt: England-born, New York-based photographer Alexi Lubomirski has become an established name within the fashion industry, shooting for such publications as Harper's Bazaar, Vogueand GQ, and working with cover stars such as Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Lopez and Nicole Kidman, to name but a few. It was after shooting Lupita Nyong'o, however, that Lubomirski was struck by the homogeneity of the subjects he'd been hired to shoot professionally. Often when he submitted a list of models he was interested in shooting, responses would range along the lines of "we love her, but...," "her hair is a problem," "she is too dark" or "she is too light to make a statement." In Diverse Beauty, Lubomirski aims to move beyond the underrepresentation of women from a range of ethnicities in fashion media. The volume compiles his photographs of beautiful women of every color, size, age and sexual orientation in a celebration of beauty that adds dimension to the standards so omniscient in Western fashion magazines and advertisements. This handsome volume of cinematic fashion portraiture--featuring such subjects as Lupita Nyong'o, Rashida Jones, Salma Hayek, Demi Lovato, Anja Rubik, Jennifer Lopez, Chanel Iman, Hari Nef, Isabella Rossellini, Tyra Banks and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, among many others--is also a small step in the direction of changing societal norms.