An image of the late Queen with her eyes gently closed — serene, radiant, forever captured in a moment of contemplation, is one of the most recognisable portraits of the 21st century. But behind that image, a dispute is boiling over, raising serious questions about authorship. Snapped by Chris Levine, it was later turned into a hologram that has fetched over £180,000 at a Sotheby’s auction.
Rob Munday, a pioneering holographer, claims he is the uncredited co-creator of Equanimity and Lightness of Being — two portraits long attributed solely to artist Chris Levine. This week, Munday took his fight to the High Court, seeking formal recognition as a joint author of the works. Levine, meanwhile, maintains he alone was commissioned to create them and that Munday’s role was purely technical.
At stake is more than a name on a plaque. The dispute reopens questions about authorship, technology, and the uneasy marriage between artistic vision and scientific expertise. The two portraits, first unveiled in 2004, occupy an almost mythic place in the visual history of the monarchy. They’ve been reproduced countless times, shown in major galleries, and even absorbed into the visual lexicon of British identity. Yet the process behind them — the careful orchestration of light, lenses, and time — was, according to Munday, a deeply collaborative act.
In documents, Munday argues that his creative input went far beyond mere technical support. A graduate who devoted his career to the development of holography, he claims Levine could not have produced the portraits without his involvement. “I’ve been going through this cycle for 20 years,” Munday said. “I’m not young any more; it felt like this had to be fought now or never.”
The Jersey Heritage Trust commissioned the works to commemorate the island’s 800th anniversary of allegiance to the Crown. The sittings took place between late 2003 and early 2004, using complex holographic techniques that required multiple cameras and precise light projection. Out of that process came Equanimity — a poised, formal image of Elizabeth II in royal regalia — and Lightness of Being, an ethereal study that captured the monarch in an unguarded moment of introspection. Both are held in the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection.
Munday alleges that a 2005 agreement between himself, Levine, and the Jersey Heritage Trust established shared authorship. He now accuses Levine and his company, Sphere 9, of breaching that settlement, claiming his moral rights have been violated by Levine’s continued insistence on sole authorship. Levine, who holds the copyright, has not yet filed a defence.
The disagreement has deepened in the wake of another legal skirmish. Earlier this year, the Jersey Heritage Trust sued Levine for breach of contract, alleging that he sold unlicensed editions of the portraits — copies valued at millions. That case was settled out of court in September, with both parties issuing a joint statement that appeared to draw a line under the affair.
“The parties acknowledge that Chris Levine was the sole artist commissioned by the Jersey Heritage Trust,” the statement read. Yet it also credited Munday, along with Jeffrey Robb of Spatial Imaging and Dr John Perry of the United States, as collaborators whose expertise made the project possible.
For Munday, that phrasing was insufficient. He filed his own claim shortly after Levine took to Instagram, declaring that “truth prevailed” and that he was “legally recognised as the sole author” of the portraits. The post has since been deleted, but the damage, Munday says, was done. His legal action seeks a formal declaration that the portraits were jointly authored and that Levine publicly acknowledge their shared creation.
Levine’s response has been firm. In a statement, he described Munday as “a technical subcontractor… part of my team, not an artistic partner.” He dismissed the claim as “an ongoing attempt to rewrite history,” adding, “Any claim on my rights will be fiercely defended. This is my art.”
Levine, who studied at Chelsea and Central Saint Martins, has built an international reputation for his meditative, light-based portraits of public figures. His 2009 interview with The Guardian described him as “an artist who works with light and uses photography as part of the process,” a self-definition that blurred disciplinary lines even as it cemented his brand. His forthcoming monograph, Inner Light: The Portraiture of Chris Levine, features Lightness of Being on the cover — a visual shorthand for a body of work that has become synonymous with spiritual calm and visual transcendence.
The image itself, now more than twenty years old, remains a paradox. Both hyper-modern and timeless, it channels the Crown’s iconography through the language of digital light. Its grace lies in its restraint — the Queen’s eyes closed not in fatigue but in reflection, the Crown gleaming like a halo. That image has travelled far beyond the gallery wall, reproduced endlessly in magazines, books, and even on currency-like commemorative objects.
Yet the current dispute draws attention back to the invisible processes — and the invisible labour — that underpin such mythmaking. The technology behind Equanimity and Lightness of Being demanded an understanding of optics, laser light, and spatial imaging that only a handful of specialists could provide. Munday, who co-founded Spatial Imaging, spent decades refining those systems. Whether that makes him a technician or an artist — or both — is precisely what the court will have to decide.
Authorship, in this case, is not just a legal category but a philosophical one. How do we define creation when art and science fuse so seamlessly that the boundary disappears? Levine’s aesthetic, which thrives on the immaterial qualities of light, invites precisely that question. Munday’s case, meanwhile, asserts that such fusion cannot erase individual contribution — that expertise itself carries creative authorship.
As the legal proceedings unfold, the art world is left contemplating the broader implications. The case touches a nerve in a cultural landscape increasingly shaped by collaboration, technology, and image reproduction. Who owns a work when systems and people, cameras and code co-author it?
Whether the court recognises Munday as a co-creator or not, the argument reveals the tension between art as vision and art as production. It recalls older disputes — from Renaissance workshops to modern conceptual collaborations — where the line between artist and artisan was fiercely contested.
For now, Levine stands by his authorship, Munday stands by his claim, and the portraits remain what they have always been: hauntingly still, impossibly composed, their calm belies the complex web of light, machinery, and human ambition that gave them life.
Whatever the outcome, the case ensures that Equanimity and Lightness of Being will never again be seen simply as icons of royal serenity. They are now also symbols of a deeper question — one that illuminates not just a queen’s face, but the complicated light of creation itself.
Top Photo: P C Robinson © Artlyst 2025