Vampire Weekend Cover Model Ann Kirsten Kennis Sees Herself Everywhere

By Zach Baron Fri., Jul. 30 2010 at 3:45 PM

Categories: Featured, Scandal, The Law, Vampire Weekend

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Frankly, this lawsuit is getting a little depressing. The internet crowed when TMZ first broke the news that the mysterious woman on the cover of Vampire Weekend's Contra was suing both the band and the man who claimed to have taken the photograph. Then she turned out to be a pretty nice lady, or so it seemed, and maybe photographer Tod Brody was a little shady. The band, for their part, tried to stay out of it, communicating mostly via emoticon and private journal. Now the Fairfield Citizen has a profile of Kennis (via Stereogum), and it's hard not to feel bad for her. For one thing, the picture is everywhere:

Kennis can't seem to get away from herself. She recently visited her sister in New York City, and soon after she parked her car on Columbus Avenue, she looked up and saw a large image of her younger self on scaffolding.
"It's very surreal," she said.

This after the image was originally brought to her attention by her 13-year-old daughter, who saw the picture of her mother in an advertisement while browsing the internet. Friends have apparently spotted the image "on posters and billboards as far away as London, Finland and Montreal." Perhaps most humiliatingly, her nephew--a sophomore at Columbia, VW's alma mater--told the paper that members of his tennis team were "talking about the 'hot' girl on the Vampire Weekend album cover. He had not seen the cover at the time the discussion was taking place sunsequently [sic] told his friends, 'she's my aunt.'" Yug. Nor does Kennis find the photo flattering, since in her opinion, she looks pretty vacant: "It's like someone called my name and I turned." And she doesn't look much like the person in that photo any more, because of recent chemotherapy.

So, to recap: a photo she hates of a younger self she no longer resembles is relentlessly haunting her and her family. Maybe we'd sue too.

Haunting image: Fairfielder sues when old photo resurfaces on Vampire CD cover [Fairfield Citizen]

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