The Story Behind Columbia Pictures’ Iconic Logo: How Photographer Found Model for 1992 Shoot

The photographer behind Columbia Pictures’ iconic logo says she and her model both remain “amused by the attention it gets, even to this day.”
Kathy Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for her work documenting Hurricane Katrina for the New Orleans newspaper The Times Picayune, recently spoke with Yahoo Entertainment about photographing model Jenny Joseph in 1992.

After Anderson and Joseph’s photoshoot, artist Michael Deas then used the photos as inspiration to paint what turned into Columbia Pictures’ 1992 logo that the company still uses today, according to the outlet.

Columbia Pictures had commissioned Deas to update its longtime logo, showing a woman holding a torch similar to that of the Statue of Liberty. The artist then asked Anderson, who worked at The Times Picayune at the time, to take photographs. She “immediately said yes,” based on past work experience with Deas, Anderson told the outlet.
Jenny Joseph, who ultimately modeled for the shoot, was working as a graphic artist for the newspaper when Anderson asked her to participate during a lunch break one day, according to Yahoo Entertainment.

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“She turned out to be perfect,” Anderson said of Joseph, who was 28 at the time of the shoot. The photography session took place at her New Orleans home, which Anderson said she reorganized to fit Deas’ vision for the shoot.

“After moving my dining room table out of the way and converting the living room of my apartment into a studio, I set up a mottled gray backdrop,” she told the outlet. “I placed a couple of boxes on the floor to let the fabric drape. I put a Polaroid back on the Hasselblad camera to start with some test shots.”

According to Anderson, Deas brought props for the shoot, including the “sheets, fabric, a flag and a small lamp with a light bulb sticking out of the top” that Joseph ultimately wore and held for the photos.
“The lamp vaguely resembled a torch,” Anderson told Yahoo Entertainment, as she described “a fun-filled and creatively fused couple hours of shooting” one-time British model Joseph, who never worked as a model before or after the shoot.

Neither Deas nor Anderson expected Columbia Pictures to actually use the image in their movies, so Anderson said she “was amazed when I first saw the logo appear in a movie theater.”

“Seeing the image come to life on the big screen seemed surreal,” she told the outlet. “After a while, the image took on a life of its own, which completely surprised me. Decades after its creation, people are still fascinated with the image.”

While speaking with local New Orleans news station 4WWL about the photoshoot back in 2012, Joseph and Deas recalled that the model revealed “she had just discovered that she was pregnant” during the shoot.

“Now my daughter is able to claim that she was there too,” Joseph said of the shoot at the time.

Anderson told Yahoo Entertainment that she and Joseph remain friends today and they are still “surprised at the notoriety of the logo.”

“To this day, Jenny occasionally sends me funny GIFs that people have made from the logo,” the photographer said, said noting that even her two now adult children “thought I was cool” when she told them she made the reference photo for the logo.