Testino’s portrait of William and Kate is a sickly sweet lie | Jonathan Jones

This is fake PR nonsense – impossibly perfect people with impossibly perfect children. We – and the royals – deserve better

No one can photograph a fake smile like Mario Testino can. I am not saying the huge cheesy grins on the faces of Kate and William in his christening portrait of the royal nuclear family are fake. After all, they have plenty to smile about – the free houses, the free money, the free adulation, the fact there’s no chance of their kids ever having to worry about student loans, tax credits or the minimum wage. All smiles all the way. But Testino, the world’s most horrible flatterer of wealth and status, makes every smile look phoney. He makes reality itself seem a glib and cynical charade.

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