Annie Leibovitz
One of today’s best-known photographers is renowned for her ambitious portraits for leading magazines
Annie Leibovitz is one of the world’s most highprofile photographers.
Working for magazines including Vanity Fair and Vogue, she’s famous for her big-budget celebrity portraits of major contemporary figures in the arts, politics, business and sport. Her shoots are often big productions, and she reportedly charges between $100,000 and $250,000 per day for advertising work. What’s her background? She was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1949. Her father was a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, and the family moved frequently. In 1967, Leibovitz began studying art at the San Francisco Art Institute, and took up photography the following year. How did her career develop? She sent some photographs, including shots of an anti-Vietnam War demonstration, to Rolling Stone, and one was used on the cover. She started working as a staff photographer for the magazine in 1970, while still a student. Within three years she was its chief photographer. In 1983, she became a photographer for Vanity Fair and also began working for Vogue in 1998. She has also shot major advertising campaigns for global brands including Gap and American Express. What’s her style? Leibovitz is best known for theatrical, beautifully lit, highly polished portraits of her famous subjects. She consciously focuses on their public persona rather than their inner personality and has said that she is “more interested in what they do than who they are”. How is she regarded? Her work divides opinion. For some, she’s a great photographer whose images are the definitive portraits of our age, while others say her work is mainly about glamorising and flattering celebrity. She has been given a string of major awards, including the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal. What are her most famous images? In 1980, she photographed John Lennon and Yoko Ono together. Lennon was lying naked and in a foetal position with Ono fully-clothed beside him. He was tragically murdered just a few hours later. The image was later used on the cover of Rolling Stone.
Other well-known Leibovitz images include Demi Moore, photographed nude and pregnant, and Whoopi Goldberg in a bath of milk. What’s her latest book? A new collection of her portrait work has recently been published. It shows 150 portraits of the famous, including Stephen Hawking, Bruce Springsteen, Scarlett Johansson, Barack Obama, Serena & Venus Williams and Queen Elizabeth II. The images range from elaborate set-ups to simple black-and-white portraits.
In the book, Leibovitz admits: “I often wish that my pictures had more of an edge, but that’s not the kind of photographer I have come to be.” Ultimately, she says, she is “always aiming for a portrait that will stand the test of time”.