Vampire Weekend LP Cover Model Speaks

Meanwhile the legal flap heats up as various people come out of the woodwork, smelling money...

By Fred Mills

So, that whole Vampire Weekend kerfluffle surrounding the cover photo of their latest album Contra just gets better and better. Well, not really. But it's back in the news cycle today.

Recall how a little over a month ago word arrived of Kirsten Kennis - a much younger version of whom is indeed the girl on the VW sleeve - filing a lawsuit over the unauthorized use of her image. (We compared this to the 1991 controversy over Sub Pop act Tad's 8-Way Santa record sleeve.) Shortly thereafter, both the band's label and frontman Ezra Koenig made some generally noncommittal statements about the matter, obviously just trying to buy some time in the public mind while the lawyers got in gear.

So today at VanityFair.com, Kennis is interviewed at her home in Fairfield, CT, by writer Jessica Flint about the Vampire Weekend deal. In a story titled "Vampire Weekend's Mutinous Muse" Kennis discusses how here 13-year old daughter Alex came across a shot of the record cover in a Barnes & Noble ad. Kennis is quoted as saying, "And I was like, ‘Yeah, that's strange. That's me, many years ago,'" Flint adding that Kennis was "momentarily stunned by the sight of all that beautiful hair. Three weeks earlier she had completed chemotherapy for breast cancer, and her hair was just starting to grow back."

The story goes on to outline how Kennis, a retired catalogue model, gradually changed from bemusement to anger, and eventually decided to file a $2 million lawsuit. Kennis is quoted, "It felt like someone was exploiting me. Who do these people think they are that they can just take my picture from god only knows where and plaster it everywhere?"

From there the story gets even more interesting, involving modeling agencies, a photographer with a very seamy background, accusations and cross-accusations of where the photo actually came from (and therefore who owns the rights to it), and the refusal of Vampire Weekend to comment amid the realization that they just might get stuck for a pretty hefty legal bill. Read the whole thing here, and see a photo of Kennis in 2010 as well.