CANNES — Kanye West revealed his official wedding photo with Kim Kardashian took four days to produce after top photographer Annie Leibovitz pulled out of their wedding one day before the big event.
Kanye blasted Leibovitz, who shot him and Kim for the cover of Vogue, for ditching their over-the-top nuptials with just one day to go, saying, “She was afraid of celebrity.”
He added that he then spent four days of his honeymoon perfecting the photo of himself kissing Kim at the altar in Florence in front of a wall of roses.
Kanye explained, “Let me tell you something about that kiss photo that my girl put up … 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.”
“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.
“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.
“And the fact the No. 1 most-liked photo [on Instagram] has a kind of aesthetic was a win for what the mission is, which is raising the palette.
“It was a long time,” he added — drawing laughs from the audience, before later adding, “Why did Annie Leibovitz pull out one day before the wedding?”
Kim and Kanye’s wedding photo is the most-liked image ever on Instagram, with more than 1.93 million likes, and more than 35,000 comments.
Outspoken Kanye joined a Cannes Lions panel that included music and branding guru Steve Stoute, Bloomberg News’ Stephanie Ruhl and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz.
When the discussion turned to celebrity and branding deals, and Jay Z’s deal with Samsung, Kanye quipped, “I am not a fan of Samsung, by the way.”
He added, “The reason I said I didn’t like Samsung is because throughout my entire life … I have to work with the No. 1, I can’t work with anyone but Jay Z, I can’t be with any girl but Kim because that’s the girl that I look at her pictures the most and get turned on the most. I am not going to represent any company except Louis Vuitton because that’s the best.”
Kanye continued, “I am multiple things, but I am a celebrity, we are treated sometimes like we are rentable.”
The talk turned to Apple’s acquisition of Beats Electronics for $3 billion. Stoute said, “Beats sales were driven by culture and artists and Apple saw that. Of course they wanted to team up with the guys who were bridging culture and technology, it makes sense.”
On Alicia Keys’ ill-fated deal to become creative director of BlackBerry, Stoute added, “Alicia Keys is not the right fit to be the creative director for BlackBerry, obviously that was BlackBerry trying a last-ditch attempt to see what celebrity they could get to do something … she was set up to fail.”
Kanye added, “I think it is ridiculous giving any celebrity a creative director role of anything. There is only like three guys who I think could work like that, and that’s Ryan Leslie, me and Will.I.Am, because we care about it. We’re inside of it.”
The only way I can be an inspiration is, I get bashed so much but create so much. Just know if you want to be a boxer, you are going to get your face bashed in constantly, but you may be a Mayweather or an Ali at the end of it.
- Kanye West
When asked how he deals with his critics, he said, “You have to be able to take the lashes of people not understanding: It took two years of people not understanding an interracial relationship like that [him and Kim]. You have to take the lashes and be able to swim in backlash.
“I think I get a bad rap for saying, ‘I can do this.’ We are like the creatives with teeth, we know the idea is more important than our personal well-being, I may say things that are not for my personal well-being … you are creating to make everybody’s lives better.
“The only way I can be an inspiration is, I get bashed so much but create so much. Just know if you want to be a boxer, you are going to get your face bashed in constantly, but you may be a Mayweather or an Ali at the end of it.”
Talking of his infamous “Bound II” video, which featured him smooching a topless Kim on a motorcycle, he insisted their subsequent Vogue cover gave it, and them, legitimacy. He explained, “I still take a bashing for the ‘Bound’ video. But if the Vogue cover had come out after the ‘Bound’ video, everyone would have been like, ‘Its okay.’ We hadn’t yet got the endorsement from something as established as Vogue.”
Horowitz added on creativity, “You know what the difference between a vision and a hallucination is? They call it a vision when other people can see it.”
Kanye, who opened the conversation by saying, “I don’t want to say all these big over-the-top statements that end up getting quoted the wrong way,” went on to deliver a number of other quotable gems (also known as Westisms):
• “Fashion is so important because they are trained thinkers of taste. The reason I have been trying to build relationships in that world is that … celebrity is the highest form of communication, we are like walking networks or TV shows or brands. You don’t think good taste, and I think bad taste is vulgar — it’s like cursing. I believe the world can be saved by design because, what is the most vulgar thing someone could do? Kill someone, so good taste is the opposite of that.”
• “Black people are allowed to wear big chains and name what they have on and say out loud what things cost.”
• “The world as a whole is f—g ugly, and the Internet is f—g ugly. But I am not in the construction business.”
• “We have to remember Rome wasn’t built in one day. But the Internet is the new Rome.”
• “Empower the best content creators or f—k you.” Looking at the audience, he added, “Not you in particular.”