This volunteer crew is on a mission to fix Wikipedia’s worst celebrity photos

Visit a celebrity’s Wikipedia page and there’s a good chance you’ll be greeted by a blurry, outdated, or unflattering photo. These images often look like they were snapped in passing at a public event—because, in many cases, they were.

The reason? Wikipedia requires all images to be freely available for public use. Since professional photographers typically sell their work, high-quality portraits rarely make it onto the site. That’s bad news for celebrities, for whom this page is often their most-viewed online presence—and therefore the face they present to the world. Some photos are so notoriously bad, they’ve even earned a spot on a dedicated Instagram page.

Enter WikiPortraits: a team of volunteer photographers on a mission to fix this injustice.

Armed with their own camera gear—and often covering their own travel—these photographers attend festivals, award shows, and industry events to capture high-quality, freely licensed images of celebrities and other notable figures. They’ve brought portrait studios to major events like the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, and Cannes, helping to refresh outdated Wikipedia photos or fill in the blanks for biographies missing images altogether.

“It’s been in the back of our minds for quite a while now,” Kevin Payravi, one of WikiPortraits’ cofounders, told 404 Media in a recent interview. Last year, the team decided to turn the idea into action. They secured press credentials for Sundance 2024, sent a few photographers to the festival, and set up a portrait studio on site. It marked WikiPortraits’s first coordinated effort in the U.S. to capture high-quality, freely licensed images specifically for Wikipedia.

Since launching last year, WikiPortraits has grown to over 30 photographers, collectively covering about 10 global festivals and snapping nearly 5,000 freely licensed celebrity portraits. Their photos have racked up millions of views on Wikipedia and have even been picked up by news outlets around the world. Celebrities? They’re often thrilled.

Just ask Jeremy Strong. At a New York screening of The Apprentice, photographer Nikhil Dixit approached the Succession star about taking an updated Wikipedia photo. Strong’s publicist initially declined, Dixit told 404 Media, but the actor interrupted. “Wait, you’re from Wikipedia?” he asked. “For the love of God, please take down that photo. You’d be doing me a service.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91296845/this-volunteer-crew-is-on-a-mission-to-fix-wikipedias-worst-celebrity-photos?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss

Établi 2mo | 13 mars 2025, 11:20:06


Connectez-vous pour ajouter un commentaire

Autres messages de ce groupe

Beyond Imagination raises $100 million to build humanoid robots

A humanoid robotics startup co-founded by prominent artificial-intelligence futurist Ray Kurzweil said on Tuesday that ven

20 mai 2025, 16:10:04 | Fast company - tech
The environmental impact of LLMs: Here’s how OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Anthropic stack up

The companies behind AI models are keen to share granular data about their performance on benchmarks that demonstrate how well they operate. What they are less eager to disclose is information abo

20 mai 2025, 11:30:05 | Fast company - tech
Agentic AI is the future of customer service. Here’s how you need to prepare for it

Twenty-four-hour customer support with zero hold time, infinite personalization, customized care, and behavior-based response are all aspects of the customer experience that will be expected soone

20 mai 2025, 11:30:04 | Fast company - tech
Microsoft launched Copilot+ PCs a year ago to mockery. Is the world finally ready for them?

A year ago today, Microsoft unveiled what it believed would be the future of home computing.

20 mai 2025, 11:30:03 | Fast company - tech
Why governments keep losing the ‘war on encryption’

Reports that prominent American national security officials used a

19 mai 2025, 23:50:04 | Fast company - tech
Gen Z is turning to ChatGPT for outfit advice

With around 1 billion searches on ChatGPT each week, Gen Zers are increasingly turning to AI to solve a daily dilemma: what to wear.

Last month, OpenAI announced updates to ChatGPT’s sea

19 mai 2025, 23:50:03 | Fast company - tech
Trump signs a bipartisan bill targeting revenge porn and AI-generated sexual images

President Donald Trump signed the TAKE IT DOWN Act into law on Monday, strengthening federal protections for victims of r

19 mai 2025, 21:30:05 | Fast company - tech