Alexi Lubomirski Is a Photographer, a Poet and a Prince
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LONDON — Hollywood, royalty, action!
British photographer Alexi Lubomirski is celebrating 20 years behind the lens with a new tome “The Sittings (2003-2023)” and an exhibition at the ArtSpace in Claridge’s Hotel open until May 15 featuring his subjects, from Hollywood to royalty, including Gwyneth Paltrow; Eddie Redmayne; Victoria Beckham; Prince Charles, now King Charles III, and Julia Roberts, who wrote the foreword.
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The book is out for purchase at ArtSpace for 45 pounds and will be available beginning May 31 in the U.S. on Lubomirski’s website.
At the opening of his exhibition at ArtSpace, he flies around the room humbly introducing himself as Alexi rather than the man behind the large-scale images printed onto the walls.
The idea for the book had been brewing since 2021.
“Every now and then you have to look through your work. It could be because you’re looking to see where you’ve been and where you’re going in terms of your style or your voice. Other times, you just happen to be looking back because you’re trying to find an old image,” says Lubomirski, sitting in his hotel bedroom in a denim shirt matching his blue eyes.
He compares picking his favorite image out of the 113 in the book to a parent picking their favorite child.
When he’s photographing his subjects, he makes up characters about who they are in front of his camera, but never tells them, with the exception of Kate Winslet.
“I say to her, ‘in this story, there’s this woman, you’re in a Parisian apartment, you’re married, but you’re having an affair and every Wednesday you meet your lover in this apartment. You’re there now, but he hasn’t turned up and I want you to think about that, and then all of a sudden, you hear footsteps coming up the stairs, that’s what I want you to be,’” Lubomirski details of the shoot, which was for Harper’s Bazaar U.K.
“She was like, ‘got it, don’t worry about it.’ I go behind the camera and she starts turning around and dips her chin and her shoulder comes up — you see the genius of a good actor and how they use every angle of their body as an emotional tool. That was a real great gift she gave me because actresses and actors sometimes find it difficult being on a photo shoot because they’re playing themselves,” he adds.
All the proceeds from his book will be going to the charity Concern Worldwide, which he discovered after his first big paycheck as a photographer.
“When I was younger I remember reading something that said, ‘it’s good to give 10 percent of your earnings to charity.’ I thought, ‘oh, that’d be cool, when I’m a grown up, I’m going to do that.’ Then of course, working in pubs and cafés during college, you have enough money to buy a baked potato,” says Lubomirski, who donated the remainder of his cash to the charity after paying his rent, paying off debt and buying some booze.
“I walked down the street in west London to try and find somebody to go and give this money to and the first corner I turned, there was this person shaking a can and it was Concern Worldwide,” he adds, explaining that the charity aims to support small and large organizations, from refugees to victims of natural disasters.
Lubomirski signed up for donations with Concern Worldwide ever since without thinking about it and when it came to publishing his first children’s book, “Princely Advice for a Happy Life,” in 2015, he donated all the proceeds to the charity, for which he has since become an ambassador.
His other pen on paper is poetry.
“It’s my guilty pleasure. I always liked it, but I hid it because I’m an English, straight boy, and it was like, ‘you’re a fashion photographer, and that’s your lane.’ God forbid you do anything else and bear your heart or be too sloppy, or cheesy. Going to New York really freed a lot of that in me because you can be whoever you want to be there,” says Lubomirski.
Then something personal happened in his life, that he calls “future hindsight.”
“Every decision that I make is decided on how I would feel about it at the end of my life and it frees up everything. So when I’m on my deathbed, will I think to myself, ‘thank God, I didn’t write any poetry that would have been so embarrassing,’ or are you going to go, ‘I’m so glad I wrote poetry because it feeds my soul,’” he adds.
Lubomirski first put his hand to poetry by writing poems for his wife, Giada Lubomirski, whom he has been married to for 14 years. After they married on Aug. 8, 2009, he would celebrate their monthiversary with a poem, a red rose and an uncut pearl for the next 10 years.
They would keep the pearls in a glass jar by their bedside table to watch their love grow and with the idea of stringing the pearls into a necklace for their future granddaughter on her wedding day.
“Thank God my wife likes when I write her poetry. When I wrote her the first poem, I was so nervous that I was gonna freak her out because not everybody likes it. She read the first line and started crying, and I was like, ‘I’m going to marry you,’” says Lubomirski gleefully.
He now writes his wife three to four poems a year.
Lubomirski’s acts of love are prince-like.
“I’m cheesy, like a cheese board and cheese factory,” he jokes.
He’s a descendant of the House of Lubomirski, a Polish and Lithuanian princely family and carries the title of HSH (His Serene Highness) Prince. In 2018, Lubomirski became the official photographer for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement and wedding photos. He photographed the Sussexes again in 2021 for their 2021 Christmas card featuring Princess Lilibet’s public debut.
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