‘Disturbing’: Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner star on strange magazine cover
Do you recognise any of these people? Photo: W Magazine/Jason Kibbler
Models Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner have appeared on what might be one of the strangest magazine covers to ever hit news stands, for American fashion bible W‘s 10th anniversary art issue.
US artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin were responsible for turning the Instagram sensations into “super-friendly, highly adaptive domesticated animals in a humanoid zoo” for the unconventional spread.
This transformation included giving Jenner and Hadid dog and cat ears, animal noses and, bizarrely, photoshopping out their kneecaps and elbows.
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With the photo series, titled ‘Placebo Pets’, Fitch and Trecartin said they were trying to emulate the way social media has “tamed and trained” human beings as if they were animals.
“There’s a certain power that animals have over us when they respond to us in unexpected, friendly ways,” Trecartin told W.
“And it’s really them domesticating us almost more than us domesticating them, because they’re training us to want them. Training and taming something is not one-sided.
“We created social media, but then it changed us because we interacted with it. It transforms us and transforms the next thing that happens just by existing. You can’t really avoid being trained.”
Fitch and Trecartin have been collaborating for 14 years and both have showed their work at prestigious galleries like the Whitney and MOMA PS1 in New York.
The artistic duo chose Jenner and Hadid to star in the spread because of the models’ massive social media influence – they have a combined 91.8 million Instagram followers between them.
The reaction to the cover has been one of confusion and disapproval, with some accusing the magazine of ascribing the word “humanoid” to physical attributes typical of African American people.
“This shoot was terrible, why would they agree to this?” one Instagram user said of Jenner and Hadid.
“I’m disturbed, and not in a good way,” another added.
“Is this a joke?” asked another.
