The "Associate Photographer" shooting Vogue Covers

We found it interesting to see an "associate photographer" credit for the latest Vogue Cover.

But did Vogue do photographer Felix Kunze dirty by burying his credit?

Here’s the cover of the latest Vogue, featuring the iconic September issue with the headline "Blake By Baz" 👆.

The Baz in question is renowned film director Baz Luhrmann. He's well known for directing films like Moulin Rouge, Romeo and Juliet, and The Great Gatsby. We love Baz's work. But we also know that he is not a photographer 📸🤔.

The images are lovely and extremely well crafted. Being the photo nerds that we are 🤓 we of course had to dig deeper. Does Baz have some secret second life as a photographer? It turns out that he doesn't.

Who was the guy actually snapping the photos? Buried in the Vogue credits we see the "associate" credit for Felix Kunze

The Harper Finch team couldn't just stop there. We had to learn more. Our forensic exploration 🕵️‍♂️ found this behind the scenes reel from Vogue. We can see Baz giving notes to the talent while Felix takes the shots.

To us, this is such an interesting situation. Felix was clearly the man behind the camera... and we definitely imagine that he brought a ton of technical talent to the project.

And this wasn't some "pick up the camera and press the button" kind of production either. The shoot was all done as a "virtual production", shooting on a giant LED wall at Pier59 studio in NYC. The photography expertise required to pull a shoot like this is definitely unique.

So does Felix deserve a little more credit for his involvement?

In the world of film, it's typical for the director to take top credits, while the Director of Photography role is often more under the radar.

It seems that Vogue was taking a similar approach with how to credit this shoot. But we wonder if that's the proper way to do it on a still photo shoot. Our gut says that we would have preferred a cover that said "Directed by Baz, shot By Felix".

What do you guys think?