Annie Leibovitz

Annie Liebovitz has this uncanny knack of seeing right into the essence of someone and capturing it on film. She is easily my favorite artist. In fact, I have a limited edition print from her show Women at the Corcoran of astronaut Eileen Collins hanging in my bedroom. The photo is up here. I am not going to grab it for copyright reasons. It’s not my favorite shot of hers, but the colors are amazing and I did want to be an astronaut when I was a kid.

Leibovitz is now finishing up her ten city tour with her show “Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005”. This WaPo article about the show and the photographer does a good job capturing how I feel about her work (well if I knew high-toned art folk other than Bette Porter ;).

Some find her work too glib. Some gripe it smells of cash. And I know high-toned art folk who — appalled by the vulgarity of blatantly consumerist hype-ridden celebrity — wrinkle up their noses in the presence of her art. I don’t, I tend to marvel. Her superiority, it seems to me, is pretty undeniable, like that of Tiger Woods. Their quarrel is not with Leibovitz, their quarrel is with the world.

Her book is sitting on my end table. It is half glam, half deeply personal. It was incredible to get such a window into her personal and professional lives. Given the intimacy of the subject matter, particularly her long time relationship with Susan Sontag, it was disappointing not to have her speak more openly about the exact nature of their relationship. They were pretty clearly lovers and part of my motivation in wanting her to be more frank is the knowledge that the more people, especially folks that have such a big megaphone come out and be open, the more accepting society becomes as a whole.

Sontag actually was my graduation speaker. She was pretty dull and I remember wishing Leibovitz was speaking instead.

Back to the book. I think the WaPo author is right here.

They don’t look much like polished art. They look much more like snapshots soaked in love and hurt. None of them are bad. She doesn’t take bad pictures. But they mean much more to her than they’ll ever mean to us.

The family portraits as art were not as visually stunning as her work shoots. However, as a fan I very much appreciated seeing the personal come to the forefront. Celebrities are often very protective of their inner emotional workings. In some ways the book reminds me of how strange it is to have celebrities writing personal blogs. I finally read Tammy Lynn Michael’s blog today (Mrs. Melissa Etheridge) and was struck by how much she was sharing openly with the world. Long story short, I am bummed that I missed the Liebovitz show and I look forward to seeing her next one. In the mean time, I hope she gets a few more Vanity Fair assignments.