Family Ties

For the portfolio “Meet the Parents” (page 162), Vassi Chamberlain, Mark Holgate, Ellie Pithers, and Emma Specter spoke to six thoroughly modern families, each with a distinctive (and inspiring) origin story—from finding their egg donor over FaceTime during the pandemic to co-parenting as best friends. Contributing fashion editor Tabitha Simmons worked with Annie Leibovitz to capture them all, a project that sent the photographer from downtown Manhattan to rural Connecticut and back. (Two more portraits, in British Columbia and Paris, were executed remotely.) The story had a certain resonance for Leibovitz, who has a singular family of her own—she’s pictured here with daughters Sarah, Susan, and Samuelle in 2015.