Elite Traveler Spring 2021

INFLUENCE THE BIG INTERVIEW

Alexi Lubomirski on the passion of creativity The celebrity photographer who captured the engagement and wedding of Prince Harry andMeghanMarkle, Alexi Lubomirski is also an author of poetry and children’s books, an avid activist and the creator of several online movements — this ubiquitous prince embraces his creative side and releases it in many art forms. Here, he shares his passions with veteran journalist Roberta Naas

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Alexi Lubomirski is no stranger to change or risk. Born in England in 1975 and raised primarily in Botswana, Lubomirski traveled extensively as a young teen and changed career goals a few times, eventually landing on fashion and celebrity photography. He has photographed some of the most famous and admired celebrities, including Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen, for some of the world’s biggest magazines. When he got the call from the royal family to photograph the engagement and subsequent wedding of Prince Harry, then Duke of Sussex, and Meghan Markle, he jumped at the chance to capture history — once he was convinced, that is, that the call was not some sort of a joke his friends were playing on him. “One of the greatest pleasures I get from photography is taking pictures of people in love, whether it’s siblings, husbands and wives, parents. I’m a cheeseball when it comes to that. I go through the pictures and, when there’s a moment between two people looking at each other in a certain way, and I captured it, I am so excited. I want to say, ‘Look what I caught,’” says Lubomirski. In fact, the spark that he captured in those beloved royal photos, which will live on forever despite the change in the royal family, was immortalized in a set of commemorative

postage stamps made by the Royal Mail group in 2018. While Lubomirski is easily one of the most sought-after celebrity photographers today, he also has built a host of other creative outlets (he gives some credit to the fact that he is an over-achieving Virgo). Not wanting to be pigeonholed into a single career, Lubomirski has spread his proverbial wings — something he says took some time to come to terms with. “For me, creativity is the central theme of my passions. There’s a magic to creating an inspiration, to taking an idea that suddenly drops into your head and creating a result from that. Sometimes when you see something, or smell something, or somebody says something, it is like turning on a tap and everything flows out,” says Lubomirski. “But up until about six years ago, whenever I was inspired, I thought I had to manifest the idea in photography, because that was my job title. But it wasn’t until I took off those boundaries and allowed the idea to come out in whatever form best fit it, that I realized I could do whatever struck me.” The first medium other than photography that he turned to was writing. His first book, published in 2015, Princely Advice for a Happy Life , was written for his two young sons and was designed to teach each of them how to be a good person. The book, which has been translated and published in six different languages, is filled with anecdotes and advice about how to handle and react to different situations. It also brought home some important facts of his own life to Lubomirski. For it, he referred to his own title of Prince as a play on “So, I decided to photograph some of the most diverse women to showcase a broad spectrum of beauty — all ethnicities, skin types, hair colors — just to show that you can take high-fashion photos of anyone.”

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Left Diverse Beauty by Alexi Lubomirski

words. By birth, as a member of the Polish Lubomirski family, Lubomirski holds the honorary title of Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, a moniker bestowed on his ancestors by Emperor Ferdinand III in the 17th century. “I never used my title until I brought out this book. It was used as a hook because I thought about what princely behavior would be, and it is essentially being a good person. So, I used it in the title,” says Lubomirski, adding that it wasn’t until he had children that he realized the importance of ancestry. “As a child, that title was a burden. It added angst about who I was. I was just a kid growing up in Botswana, in the dust, and I had my father talking to me about title, duty and history and, while it was fascinating, I was on a different frequency. It didn’t make any sense in my