Balenciaga Jewelry Fall 2022 Ad Campaign

Review of Balenciaga Jewelry Fall 2022 Ad Campaign by Photographer Martin Schoeller with Models Annabelle Pouilly, Marie-Agnès Diene, Zhuo Chen, and Abdou

Balenciaga turns portraiture on its head with a strangely cool new campaign for its latest jewelry collection, captured by photographer Martin Schoeller.

Schoeller captures his models in simple studio headshots wearing just the jewelry from the collection. But the images are then edited so that the eyes and mouths of each subject are upside down, transforming their normal resting faces into subtly bizarre and unreadable expressions, and making for a grippingly weird portrait.

It’s a simple yet wickedly clever concept that, without distracting too much from the star jewelry pieces, illuminates the portraits with the digitally augmented, uncanny, transhumanist aesthetic that has largely defined Balenciaga’s mysteriously cool brand today.