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“An evening with Annie Leibovitz” is the title of the event organized at the Knight Concert Hall at the Adrianne Arsh Center, whose cost of the ticket included the purchase, whether signed or not, of the book Annie Leibovitz at Work . The orders given at the beginning of the evening by the security officers spoke very clearly: forbidden the use of cameras and telephones, no photographs, videos or recordings of any kind. An exaggeration I thought, but then when Annie Leibovitz came out on stage in an outfit, far from formal for the evening and for the place we were in, at the the end of her speech I thought the message was clear: an evening with Annie Leibovitz was much more than what could be expected, not the suggestion of some tips on her technique, but rather one emotional chat about her life through her shots, very intimate, revealing her honesty by making a backward account of her life, with irony and melancholy: Family shots, shots of death, shots of affections and celebrities. I think Annie Leibovitz can be considered the most influential female figure in photographic field of our times, and actually if you think of a female photographer it is difficult not to think of her. One could mention Anne Geddes undoubtedly, but her related niche photography is exclusively for children, it frees her from the concept of a 360 degree photographer. Annie Leibovitz, born in Anna-Lou Leibovitz, was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1949, the third daughter of six. Jewish of origin, she began taking photographs when her father, Lieutenant Colonel of the American Air Force was transferred to Vietnam during the war. Her first camera was a Minolta SR-T 101. Living as an expatriate on a station wagon, with 5 brothers in continuous movement because of the father’ job, united to the Mom’s bohemian refinement, passionate about music and dance, has shown Annie the path of photographic art as a medium way faster than painting to represent the reality that led her to enroll in the San Francisco Institute with the intention of becoming an art teacher; intention that she will definitely abandon after having known and appreciated the photographic genre of Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson that abduct her to the point of choosing the photograph as: ‘The means to exit in the world with a well-defined purpose.
As a result she began to photograph everything, starting from the road, the paths, the simplest objects and the closer faces: her family. And she does it as if it were a sort of lesson in a mixture of determination and moderation, to which it is difficult to say what side prevailed. And every time she photographed, even the same subject, everything happened differently: the circumstances were different, just as the places, the dynamics and the emotions.
Annie Leibovitz wasted no time and during her years of study at the San Francisco Art Institute, she decided to go to Israel to work in a kibbutz. Once back in America, she showed up at the Rolling Stone headquarters with some of her photos taken during a demonstration against the war in Vietnam and others that she had taken in Israel and that was when Rolling Stone published a photograph of hers on the cover.
This collaboration started by chance was her launching pad which brought her to replacing her Minolta with a Nikon camera, three to be precise because “There was no time to waste in replacement of objectives “ : a 35mm, a 50mm and a 105mm.
The contact with Bea Feitler, director of Harper Bazaar who worked with Richard Avedon, allowed her to understand how, in addition to war and street photography, magazine photography, combined with the power of the magazine, could be exploited together. Thus she started working for magazine photographs with an artistic director, a publisher and some writers but trying to use the magazine as a vehicle to her advantage: “Things happen without them being meant to happen “: the writers began to use photographs to tell their stories, as happens with W.Eugene Smith on Life Magazine, in which the texts are accompanied by images of sick people, with parts of the body amputated: from Smith’s photographs, Annie manages to see a sense of intimate portraiture, not merely referring to family, but to life situations in general.
There are several historical photographers with whom she has been practicing for the last twenty years: Hunter Thompson extremely charismatic as introvert, Annie says he did not like working with people. About this, the early years Annie Leibovitz recalls an amusing and embarrassing episode of how this extravagant character had been stopped by the police for measuring the alcohol blood level and he had asked to take pictures, so many images in the meantime of the situation for which the same policeman eventually has them let go. Although he did not love working with people, Hunter wanted her by his side in the presidential campaign but keeping her at a distance so as to give her the opportunity to see things in her own way, to let her focus on her ideas, helping her understand “how to see.” Tom Wolfe, another photographer, wanted her with him in Florida for the mission of Apollo 17 in which instead of photographing what all the photographers present would have done, she began to photograph the expressions of photographers intent to capture the scene during the launch of the Apollo 17.
David Elton who taught her to appreciate the Beach Boys and introduced her into the comedy environment.
Over the years writers began to give importance to photography and to include photographs for
tell their stories because they had guessed that photographers had different perspectives from theirs, from which they could get ideas.
The last job with Hunter was that of Nixon’s resignation: while the other photographers were concentrating on Nixon while he climbed onto the helicopter, she photographed the two soldiers who rolled up the red carpet stretched to get to the vehicle. Larry Schiller was another photographer that she called brilliant, for the arrangements and experiments he did with his camera and that led her to want to know the conceptual photographic techniques of all great photographers.
In the ’70s, at the explicit request of Mick Jagger, she takes the place of Robert Frank, working with the Rollling Stones, and following them on tour: an experience that she herself defined as “surreal, extreme: hundreds of rolls before, during and after the concert. Devastated by fatigue from drugs and sex “. Few images were published because considered too strong. Images that Annie Leibovitz now shares with us through her stories and her book.
After working for Rolling Stone magazine in 1983 she signed a contract with Vanity Fair. A choice initially difficult because of the fact that Irving Penn was the official photographer of Vanity Fair, supported by Ruth Ansel, director creative, who had relegated her to the role of advertising.
It was Tina Brown, succeeded by Ruth Ansel to give her back her role as a photographer. From there the first campaign she studied and photographed for American Express. Very simple, a portrait photograph of famous people, with the inscription: “Cardmember from the XXXX … being a member has his privileges” Simple, clean, immediate. And like that many familiar faces and famous people that were at her disposal for two days of work: one to get to know each other and talk and one to shoot. From 1987 to 1992 she took a thousand photographs for the American Express campaign and after that for the GAP campaign, more graphics than portraiture, for which she learned to work with the seabed. Gray backdrops, never white.
Without mentioning the countless career prizes and honors, she has photographed many characters during the years: from the Rolling Stones to John Lennon in the iconic image that portrays him naked, entwined with his wife Yoko Ono. It will be her last photo taken the day before his death. And then Ella Fitzgerald, Whoopi Goldberg, Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Irene Williams, Meryl Streep, Al Sharpton, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, Cyndi Sherman, Carl Lewis, Charles Austin, OJSimpson in court, Puff Dady and Kate Moss, Ben Stiller, Stephen Hawking, Sally Mann Natalia Vodianova, Christian Lacroix, Keira Knightley and Jeff Koons, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, Patty Smith, LeBron James, the Bush administration as a whole, the Christo artist completely packaged, Michelle and Barack Obama, Trump and Melania before he became president of the USA, Hillary Clinton, Johnny Deep and Nicole Kidman, Anna Wintour, Queen Elizabeth on two different occasions: the first portrayed in a golden dress and at a distance of years, by her will to be with her daughter Anna and her beloved dogs. The images portrayed by Annie Leibovitz could be compared to the artistic portraits experiments by Andy Warhol. The latest images see her as the official photographer for the movie Mary Poppins starring Emily Blunt, Meryl Streep and Dick Van Dyke, soon in theatres. Alongside all these portraits and scenes that have happened over the years: the images of the Sarajevo war, scenes of pain related to the agony of the father or life partner Susan Sontag, photographs of her sons and her mother, photographed when she was still in the early days and then as an official photographer, at an older age. All this experience-full baggage gave her, without any doubt, the possibility of excelling in the ability to grasp the emotional nuances she knew how to highlight. Highlighting the needs, the virtuosity, the expression of people, but also the frauds. Each of the photographed characters let Annie inside them, in their intimacy, in their being more or less consciously part of the world of Annie Leibovitz.
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