Annie Liebovitz
(1947 - )
Annie Leibovitz was born in Westport, Connecticut in 1947. She studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1967. Leibovitz soon began to search for other methods of artistic expression. In 1968, she traveled to Japan with her mother and on the trip, bouth her first professional camera, a Minolta SRT101. Leibovitz started taking amateur pictures, which she developed herself.
After returning to the Art Institute, Leibovitz began taking night courses in photography. She was introduced to the works of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, and Robert Franck by Ralph Gibson, a friend she met while at the institute. In 1970, Leibovitz contacted the San Francisco youth and rock magazine Rolling Stone and sold them a picture of beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Robert Kingsbury the magazines art director was so impressed that he introduced Leibovitz to the two-year old magazine founder, editor Jann Wenner.
In 1971, Leibovitz graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a bachelor of fine arts degree. She worked on a small assignment in Europe and returned to Rolling Stone, where he was hired that same year. In 1973, Leibovitz was promoted to chief photographer of Rolling Stone, a title she would hold for ten years. Leibovitz's early photographs were in black and white. When Rolling Stone began printing in color in 1974, she started using color film, staging elaborate scenes for the magazine's covers. At the magazine Leibovitz also developed her trademark technique, which involved the use of bold primary colors and surprising poses. By 1974, Leibovitz had already taken photographs of the era's most famous rock artists and many of its political personalities. In 1975, Leibovitz served as the official concert photographer for the Rolling Stones. She traveled with the band, capturing many facets of their tour, both onstage and off. One of her most famous photographs of that time is a nude of John Lennon embracing a fully clothed Yoko Ono, the photo was taken on December 8, 1980, just hours before his death. It became the cover of Rolling Stone's a month later. In 2005, Lenno's photograph topped the American Society of Magazine Editor's list of the best cover pictures of the past forty years.
In 1983, Leibovitz left Rolling Stone and started working for Vanity Fair and Vogue. A number of her covers provided startling images of well-known figures: the actress Demi Moore, nine months pregnant and nude except for a diamond ring, in 1991; the black comedian Whoopi Goldberg, half submerged in a bathtub of milk; and the late artist Keith Haring, who painted himself like one of his canvases for the photograph. Inthe 1980s, Leibovitz has produced prize-winning campaigns for clients such as American Express; her portraits of celebrity cardholders like Elmore Leonard, Tom Selleck, and Luciano Pavarotti earned her a Clio award in 1987. Leibovitz also produced campaigns for GAP, and the Milk Board. In 1985, she became the official photographer for the World Cup Games in Mexico. In 1991, her collection of more than 200 black-and white and color photographs were exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. She was the second living photographer and first woman to have that honor. In1994, Liebovitz documented the aftermath of the sieges of Sarajevo, Bosnia. Atlanta's Olympic Games Committee commissioned Leibovitz to make portraits of participating athletes in 1996.
In addition to her work for Vogue and Vanity Fair, she has published several books of photographs, among them Olympic Portraits, in 1996; Women in 1999, (a collaborative work with critic and essayist Susan Sontag), which included an array of female images, from Supreme Court justices to Las Vegas showgirls to farmers and coal miners; and American Music in 2003.
Over the years, Leibovitz has developed the style of fantasy to such a high level that some of her shoots are openly cinematic. In the early years of the 21st century, she was probably the most famous photographer or portraitist in the United States. She was praised in the New York Times for her "extraordinary ability to inspire her subjects to show themselves as they are. For the past 25 years, no photographer has delivered more photographs of the people we most want to see than has Annie Leibovitz. Her pictures are recognizable for their bright colors, intense lighting, and above all, for unique and surprising poses. In magazine spreads and advertising campaigns, Leibovitz has demonstrated that she is a master of projecting the popular culture of our time.
