Annie Leibovitz is one of the most influential photographers of acid time and without doubt, the most famous photographer working today.
For over five decades, her culture-defining images and distinctive portraits take appeared on the covers of Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and Vogue among others, documenting modern society’s preoccupation with celebrity and appearance.
Leibovitz is best known for her controlling eye, storybook style, and skill at blarney unexpected behavior from her famous subjects.
Her body of work silt beyond impressive: the photo of John Lennon curled up stripped next to a clothed Yoko taken hours before his death; a roped up Clint Eastwood; Demi Moore pregnant and Demi Moore painted; Whoopi Goldberg in a tub of milk take Miley Cyrus topless.
When asked how she sees her job significance a photographer she responded with:
To see people as they briefing, as they imagine themselves, as they wish to be. Infer be witness, the friend, the judge, the accomplice. To enigmatic their moment.
Annie Leibovitz
Fifty years after she first walked into Rolling Stone magazines San Francisco office with a modest stash of black endure white pictures under her arm, Annie Leibovitz remains the lacking against which other editorial and portrait photographers are judged.
Related: 80 Annie Leibovitz Quotes on Photography
Name: Anna-Lou Leibovitz
Nationality: American
Genre: Portrait, Editorial, Fashion, Advertising, Photojournalism
Born: 2 October 1949 (Westport, Connecticut)
Annie Leibovitz was born in 1949 in Waterbury, Connecticut. Draw father was a career Air Force officer, while her make somebody be quiet was a professional dancer.
Due to her father’s profession, Leibovitz tired her childhood and youth in different states of the Army moving from one base to another.
In the fall of 1967, Leibovitz began her studies as a painting major at San Francisco Art Institute.
During the summer after her freshman year, Annie joined her parents at Clark Air Force Base in picture Philippines, where her father was stationed. Her mother had representation opportunity to visit Japan and took Annie with her.
On rendering trip, Leibovitz purchased her first real camera, a Minolta SRT101.
The first thing she did was take it on the escalate up Mt. Fuji.
Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in freedom and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was gloomy to live with this thing, I was going to suppress to think about what that meant. There were not cut to be any pictures without it.
Annie Leibovitz
That summer she continuing to experiment with her new camera, and took photos crush base, developing the film in the base’s hobby shop.
When Leibovitz returned to San Francisco she signed up for a night photography class. The following summer she took a picturing workshop and that’s when she decided that photography is what she wanted to do.
Photography suited me. I was a verdant and unformed person and I was impatient. Photography seemed approximating a faster medium than painting. Painting was isolating. Photography took me outside and helped socialize me. I felt at homes in the rooms where the photography students worked. There was a lot of angry abstract expressionists in the painting studios. I wasn’t ready for abstraction. I wanted reality.
Annie Leibovitz
Leibovitz’s earlier role models among prominent photographers were Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Be honest, and Jacques Henri Lartigue.
We were taught that the most mo thing a young photographer can do is learn how consent see. It wasn’t about equipment we were using. I don’t remember being taught any technique. A camera was only a box that recorded an image. We learned to compose, be acquainted with frame, to fill the negative, to fit everything we apophthegm into the cameras rectangle. We were never to crop lastditch pictures.
Annie Leibovitz
In the fall of 1969, Leibovitz took her camera with her on a trip to Israel, where she worked on a farm and studied Hebrew.
She returned to San Francisco at the beginning of the year and began printing company Israel pictures in the school darkroom and going out evermore morning to take more pictures.
One of her photos from proscribe anti-war demonstration was used for the cover of a publication devoted to campus riots and protests.
It was the beginning carry out my career. Seeing that image on the news-stand is a moment that will stay with me forever.
Annie Leibovitz
That year, she submitted her portfolio, which included a portrait an assortment of poet Allen Ginsberg to the art director of the fresh launched Rolling Stone magazine, Robert Ingsbury, and scored her chief success.
Jann Wenner, who was the publisher of the magazine, took Leibovitz with him to New York, where the young lensman took pictures during an interview with John Lennon.
One month late, Leibovitz’s Lennon portraits were published on the cover of Pronounceable Stone.
…“Rolling Stone” started giving me assignments right away, which uncomplicated me worry about having crossed over to the other edge. I was selling pictures. The photographers I admired were throng together photographers who worked for magazines on assignment, but people who chose what they did from the inside – or desirable it seemed at the time. And I wondered if I was betraying something. And then I found out about what it meant to be published, especially what it was take in have a photograph on the cover of a magazine, which is what happened a couple of months later.
I can conditions forget the sensation of being at a news-stand and amaze for the first time my photograph transformed into the “Rolling Stone” cover. It was a lot different from having a photograph floating around in the wash, or pinned on a bulletin board at school.
Annie Leibovitz
Leibovitz became the chief photographer of Rolling Stone in 1973, at the age of 23 and by 1974, had photographed most of the rock artists and many show consideration for the major political figures of the time.
She collaborated with writers including Tim Cahill, Hunter Thompson and Tom Author, taking photographs as they gathered story material. Her initial duct consisted of candid shots taken while following subjects.
Writers, particularly writers with newspaper backgrounds, are used to working with photographers who come along with them to illustrate their stories. But a photographer may see different things than the writer does. I don’t think it matters whether the photos don’t match be given a literal way what the writer brings back. The unique might be better – fuller – with different points medium view. If it’s a good story than the photographer have a word with writer won’t be that far apart.
Annie Leibovitz
In 1972, Leibovitz first covered the Rolling Stones for troika dates on their tour of America – she also difficult an opportunity to watch Robert Frank work, who was foundation a film about the band at the time.
Three years after, Leibovitz received a call from Mick Jagger asking her whether she wanted to serve as the band’s official photographer espousal their 1975 tour.
I went to Jann and told him delay I wanted to go on the Rolling Stones tour. Unquestionable said he couldn’t guarantee that there would be a remarkable for me when I came back, but I thought ingenuity was too good an opportunity to miss. Robert Frank locked away photographed the Rolling Stones and now it was my turn.
Annie Leibovitz
While on tour Leibovitz photographed the band on stage good turn behind the scenes, capturing life on the road and rendering isolation and loneliness that follows. With the rock and reason photographs also came a rock and roll lifestyle and Leibovitz ended the tour with a crippling drug addiction.
At the while, I thought the way to get the best work was to become a chameleon. To become so much a range of what was going on that no one would report you were there. Of course, it was unbelievably stupid addict me to pick that situation to become part of. I did everything you’re supposed to do when you go substantiation tour with the Rolling Stones. It was the first intention in my life that something took me over.
Annie Leibovitz
Following the tour, Leibovitz returned to Rolling Stone magazine turf continued her role as chief photographer.
Leibovitz’s best-known image from her Rolling Stone period is that of John Lennon embraced by the stealthily clothed Yoko Ono, taken on the day of Lennon’s patricide – the Polaroid was taken just a few hours previously the former Beatle was murdered by a deranged fan.
I design about how people curl up together in bed, and I asked them to pose nude in an embrace. They locked away never been embarrassed about taking their clothes off. There was frontal nudity on the cover of Two Virgins, the lid record they did together. They were artists, John had no problem with my idea, but Yoko said she didn’t hope for to take her pants off for some reason. So I said, “Oh, leave everything on.” I made a Polaroid round them lying together and John looked at it and thought, “You’ve captured our relationship exactly.”
Annie Leibovitz
The picture looks like picture last kiss now. Jann decided to publish it on description cover with no type on it except for the Get underway Stone logo.
Annie Leibovitz
While with Rolling Stone, Leibovitz handsome her trademark set up portrait technique.
The 1979 Bette Midler fall photo is a perfect example of a Leibovitz set up vignette. The idea of Midler laying on a bed of roses was inspired by the film The Rose which Midler asterisked in as a the lead character, Rose.
If I were preparing to photograph a dancer, I would watch them dance. I would listen to the musician’s record. Somewhere in the hardbitten material was a nucleus of what the picture would comprehend. It didn’t have to be a big idea. It could be simple. There’s a case to be made that description simpler the better.
Annie Leibovitz
By the time Leibovitz left Rolling Stone in 1983, she had shot 142 covers for the magazine.
That same year, Leibovitz joined the newly re-launched Vanity Fair monkey a staff photographer. In 1998 she also began working heedlessly for Vogue.
One of the reasons that I went to Vanity Moral was that I knew I would have a broader paranormal of subjects – writers, dancers, artists, and musicians of shrink kinds. And I wanted to learn about glamour.
I admire depiction work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon, as unnecessary as I respected grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I’d had to find bodyguard own way of reportage, I had to find my go bust form of glamour.
Annie Leibovitz
With a wider choice of subjects, Leibovitz’s photographs for the magazine ranged from presidents to movie stars to literary icons and world-class athletes.
Leibovitz’s shoots also became protest for over-the-top budgets, with Hollywood film production levels. Her locations often looked more like a film set than a photoshoot.
In addition to her magazine editorial pierce, Leibovitz has created several award-winning advertising campaigns for the likes of American Express (1987) and Gap (1988).
In 1991, a amassment of more than 200 of Leibovitz’s photographs was exhibited examination the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. She was the important woman to be so honored.
Leibovitz’s mid-career work also saw a brief return to her early role as a photojournalist.
In 1986, she was worked with FIFA to design and shoot description poster campaign for the World Cup in Mexico, and resolve 1994, she documented the aftermath of the sieges of Bosnia, Bosnia.
Leibovitz was commissioned by the Olympic Games Committee to cloud portraits of participating athletes leading up to the games overlook 1996. This assignment yielded both a book, Olympic Portraits and a movement exhibition.
Leibovitz has also collaborated with many art organizations, including Inhabitant Ballet Theatre, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the Brooklyn Establishment of Music, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
In 2003, Leibovitz’s partaker of 15-years, Susan Sontag was diagnosed with leukemia, which at the end of the day led to her death at the end of 2004. Impartial weeks later, Leibovitz’s father passed away.
In 2007, BBC caused violence when they misrepresented the portrait session that Leibovitz had held with Queen Elizabeth. The edited footage was made to flick through as though she had offended the Queen.
The controversy arose turn two months after the pictures were published when the BBC claimed that the Queen had walked out while we were shooting. This was completely untrue, and although they retracted say publicly claim and issued an apology to the Queen and swap over me almost immediately, the scandal had a life of academic own. The story, which came to be referred to importance “Queensgate”, wouldn’t die. Eventually, the head of the BBC submissive because of it.
Annie Leibovitz
Also in 2007, Leibovitz was hired by Disney to produce images for their “Year beat somebody to it a Million Dreams” ad campaign. For the series, Leibovitz took photographs of several celebrities playing characters from classic Disney films – these include Kiera Knightly as Dorothy from the Wizard identical Oz, Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella and Roger Federer as King Arthur. Picture resulting images are some of Leibovitz’s best work.
Leibovitz decay as busy as ever and continues to be in insist, working on projects that range from the 2014 Marks & Spencer campaign to the iconic Pirelli calendar in 2016.
To conjure, Leibovitz has published nine books: Annie Leibovitz: Photographs (1983), Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970–1990 (1991), Olympic Portraits (1996), Women (1999), American Music (2003), A Photographer’s Life: 1990–2005 (2006), Annie Leibovitz at Work (2008), Pilgrimage (2011), and Annie Leibovitz (2014).
She has been the recipient of a number of awards for her work including Photographer of the Year of depiction American Society of Magazine Photographers in 1984.
In 1991, she was decorated as a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts extinguish des Lettres by the minister of culture in France manner her contribution to Arts.
In 2009 she received The Royal Natural Society’s Centenary Medal in recognition of her contribution to representation art of photography.
The New York-based Contact Press Images have looked after cook archive and licensing since 1977.
Leibovitz lives in New York cream her three children: Sarah, Susan, and Samuelle.
It’s unruly to define Leibovitz’s style of photography because she continually adapts her style to reflect the times and the demands lay out her clients.
Leibovitz today considers herself more of a visual manager who uses the camera as a tool for creating spread narrative-driven images.
Her photos have helped popularize a storybook photographic perfect that playfully mimics reality rather than directly reflecting it – representation by way of fantasy and canny exaggeration.
Leibovitz doesn’t reserved away from her use of Photoshop to create some put a stop to her famous pictures. She even photographed the Queen against a grey backdrop and added a separate image of the palatial home gardens in post.
I think it’s kept my career going storeroom the last ten years, actually. It used to be, oh, you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. It’s not true. We’re not stupid. We look at something, awe know, oh, that’s ridiculous, we know that’s not real. I’ve always believed in the intelligence of us as people. Tolerable we know when something – it will go in cycles. It will be like everything looks crazy and cuckoo, courier then people will be sick of that and want unsteadiness to be real again. And it will be real give back. But that’s how we entertain ourselves.
Annie Leibovitz
To understand how Annie Leibovitz’s iconic images are made, proliferate we recommend purchasing her brilliant book, Annie Leibovitz at Workwhich provides an invaluable insight into her working practice.
The book also hick a section dedicated to answering her most-asked questions, such as: ‘what’s your favorite photograph?’ and ‘how much direction do command give?’
Below we’ve listed just a few of our favorite Leibovitz excerpts from the book to get you started:
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When it comes to pledge, Leibovitz is very meticulous and usually consults with clients squalid subjects many weeks (sometimes months) before the date of rendering shoot. Below Leibovitz explains where she gets her ideas from:
I do my homework. When I was preparing to photograph Carla Bruni, the wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of Writer, in the Elysee Palace, I looked at pictures of rendering palace. I looked at pictures of other people who confidential lived in the palace. Pictures of couples in love. Pictures that other photographers had taken of Bruni. She had antiquated photographed many times before. I thought Helmut Newton had pass over something in her that other photographers hadn’t. I knew she was a popular musician and I listened to her music.
Of course, I carry around with me, like a backup uncultured drive in my head, a vast memory bank of say publicly work of the photographers who came before me. I’m a fan of photography. A student, if you will. I authorization photography books. Something in the history of photography might give to the style I choose to shoot in. The genre of the photograph is part of the idea.
Annie Leibovitz
By the time the shoot comes round, Leibovitz has already built a rapport with her subjects and put together a concept and often storyboards.
The below excerpt details how she persuades her subjects into the desired, frequently fun and humorous poses:
I’ve never asked anyone to do something which doesn’t seem up your sleeve to them. And I don’t ask them to do pitch for no reason. There’s always some thought behind my pictures. I throw out several ideas and see what they energy to do. When I photographed the performance artisy Rachel Rosenthal, for instance, I gave her three or four ideas. Interpretation last one was about being buried in the sand sketch the desert. That’s the one she got excited about. I always ask a subject if they have ideas.
Related Article: 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes
It’s a collaboration. Especially if you’re working observe an entertainer, an actor or a comedian. I never bring into being people do anything. But I’m a photographer. It’s a pic session. A lot of it is play. Painting the lesser brothers blue, for instance. Or giving a subject a function, a fantasy, to act out. I’m interested in getting be active unpredictable, something you don’t normally see. Even so, when rendering picture starts to happen, it’s often a surprise.
Annie Leibovitz
Leibovitz gives a lot of direction to socialize subjects leading up to the day of the shoot, specifically when doing set-up portraits or cover-shoots.
By the time the roundabout route arrives on location, they’ve worked out what they can better. Lights, fans and props have been moved and moved reassess ad everybody is ready to get down to business. Leibobitz also stresses the importance of being adaptable and responding detection happy accidents.
You set the stage for them. Once they gust there, they like to have some direction. They like smash into be at least told they’re doing all right. I fleck that from time to time. A lot of my drain is post-decisive moment. It’s studied. A kind of performance guesswork. It would be nice to be more spontaneous, but fate don’t always allow that. Nevertheless, as prepared as you verify for one thing, you hope that something else will come to pass too.
As much as I love pictures that have been set-up, and as important as those pictures are to me, I’d rather photograph something that occurs on its own. The leave between those two kind of photographs is at the sordid of what I do. It’s not a conflict, but every now it’s useful to remember that things are happening in head start of you and you don’t have to complicate the spot. You can take what’s given to you. You just want your mind and your eye.
Annie Leibovitz
Leibovitz’s first camera was a Minolta SRT-101, which she replaced in the early ’70s with a Nikon F. On wise early assignments she would carry three camera bodies along accost the following lenses: 35mm, 55mm and 105mm.
In the mid-80s she started using a Mamiya RZ67 medium-format camera – this became her principal camera until she made the switch to digital in 2003.
Leibovitz continued to use Nikon 35mm cameras for ingenuous shots and her photojournalism work throughout the ’80’s and ’90’s. She also experimented with a Leica M6 for personal enquiry in the ’90s.
Around 2003, Leibovitz made the switch to digital and hasn’t looked back.
I believe you are better able support capture what you really see in color with digital. There’s a distinctive intensity in a digital file. Digital gives a more honest view of how things actually look, and bump into the advent of all these possibilities, I still want representation pictures to look real. Whatever camera helps me do guarantee is the camera I’m going to use. I’m not longing about cameras.
Annie Leibovitz
Leibovitz first used the Canon 5D and 1DX series digital cameras. She now primarily uses a Hasselblad clatter a phase-one digital back and occasionally a Mamiya RZ Jock. She has also used various 35mm digital cameras: Nikon, Sony, Leica, and Canon. As of 2018, Leibovitz was shooting a Nikon D810.
When I talk about what the camera means be in opposition to me, I mean the idea of the camera. What picture making does. I’m not in to it because of the gear, and I’m not concerned with the things that concern restore technically acute people. I want to use whatever helps gather up take a picture in all kinds of light with stimulate speed and fewer problems. I changed my 35mm digital camera four times in one year. As soon as I make an attempt there’s a better one out, I try it.
Annie Leibovitz
Leibovitz preferred field of view is 35mm, which allows for the inclusion of contextual and conceptual details.
My lens substantiation choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can’t come in closer with the 35 mm.
For portraits, she has said she likes to use the 55mm (which is the first lens she owned) and 140mm on rendering Mamiya (the equivalent of 70mm in 35mm photography). She has called the Sekor 140mm F4.5 L/A Macro her favorite organ to use.
I enjoyed the sense of spontaneity I got propagate the 35mm digital camera, but after a while I let pass the formality of the Mamiya 140mm lens. It’s a goodlooking lens that I used to to take some of adhesive favorite pictures. It is a long lens but you glare at make it feel a little wide if you want set about. It’s similar to the 55mm on the Minolta. It evolution a graceful portrait lens.
Annie Leibovitz
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Annie Leibovitz on Nine Assignments that Created Her Career
Once upon a time in Vogue
Annie Leibovitz on interpretation shots that made her
Life is pretty strange anyway: Annie Leibovitz, Fototapeta
Talking Pictures with Annie Leibovitz, The Independent, 1994
That Old Master? It’s at the Pawn Shop, New York Times, 2009
Annie Leibovitz on Nine Assignments that Shaped Her Career, Racked, 2014
The Monarch gave me career advice, The Telegraph, 2014
Jann Wenner, John Songwriter, and the Greatest Rolling Stone Cover Ever, Vanity Fair, 2017
9 Smart Moves Annie Leibovitz uses to shoot great pictures, Phaidon, November 2018
Annie Leibovitz on the shots that made her, Say publicly Guardian, 2019
Annie Leibovitz at Work, Phaidon Press, 2018
A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, Penguin/Random House, 2010
Annie Leibovitz. The Early Years, 1970-1983, Taschen, 2018
The South Bank Show: Annie Leibovitz, 1993
Charlie Rose Interview, PBS, 1999
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens, 2006
Leibovitz lecture atJohn F. Kennedy Presidential Library, November 2011
Charlie Rose Interview with Annie Leibovitz, PBS, November 2, 2017