A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, by Annie Leibovitz
In this project, I aim to explore the relationship between the photography of iconic, well-known people and places versus the intimate photos of one’s closest friends and immediate family members. Annie Leibovitz perfectly encapsulates the contrast between her personal and professional lives in her photobook, A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, leaving the audience with the final realization that they are actually one and the same. Her devotion to
Annie Leibovitz pairs her iconic portraits of celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone and Scarlett Johansson with intimate photographs of her family members, especially her aging mother and father, as well as with writer Susan Sontag, Leibovitz’s partner for fifteen years. Leibovitz writes that she began finding photographs for this work after Sontag’s death, while searching for photographs of her, in the book’s introduction. She also explains she “found so many things [she] didn’t remember or perhaps had not even seen before” during the search for photographs of Susan, including many family photographs (Leibovitz 1). Initially, Leibovitz didn’t intend to create a book of photography with familial and personal photographs so intwined with those she snapped on assignment. She states instead that “[she doesn’t] have two lives;” rather, all her photographs compose her life and therefore are included in this representation of her work from 1990 to 2005 (Leibovitz 2).
In her introduction, Leibovitz mentions her father’s career in the United States Air Force as a catalyst for her family’s constant moving around. She relates finding the perfect location for a photo shoot to her family’s driving around, following her father to his latest post. Additionally, Leibovitz mentions her mother’s love of dancing and playing the piano. Although her parents took photographs of Leibovitz and her siblings, she herself didn’t start taking photos until she was at the San Francisco Art Institute. Leibovitz’s connection to her Jewish family also represents her connections to Judaism, though she says “I’m not a practicing Jew, but I feel very Jewish” (Lambert, The Independent). In this way, Leibovitz blends a more modern, secular approach to photography coupled with traditional portraits of her immediate Jewish family.
As the Brooklyn Museum opened an exhibit of Leibovitz’s photographs on October 20th, 2006, not long after the book’s publication, similar interest was paid to the arrangement of photographs chosen for the exhibition as well as to that of the book’s composition. The New York Times article “From Annie Leibovitz: Life and Death, Examined” explores Sontag and Leibovitz’s mother, Marilyn, as two particularly strong parts of Leibovitz’s work. From a humanistic perspective, choosing to emphasize one’s mother and lover makes sense in a collection of photography, but Leibovitz’s ability to take such photographs so that the images of her family members stand out more to a reader than a photograph of Leonardo DiCaprio with a swan around his neck is incredible. Article “Annie Leibovitz,” also in The New York Times, describes how “family members become celebrities, but the celebrities seem emotionally empty after the charged images of the people Leibovitz loves” (McCulloch, The New York Times).
References
Annie Leibovitz Exhibition Breaks Museum of Contemporary Art Attendance Records. (2011, March 13). Raw Art Weblog. https://rawartint.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/annie-leibovitz-exhibition-breaks-museum-of-contemporary-art-attendance-records/
Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005. (2007). Www.tfaoi.org; San Diego Museum of Art. https://www.tfaoi.org/aa/7aa/7aa54.htm
Hwang, P. (2008, October 17). Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life 1995-2005. Freshness Mag. https://www.freshnessmag.com/2008/10/17/annie-leibovitz-a-photographers-life-1995-2005/
Lambert, A. (1994, March 3). Talking pictures with Annie Leibovitz: From Jagger to Trump, she. The Independent. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/talking-pictures-with-annie-leibovitz-from-jagger-to-trump-she-summed-up-the-seventies-and-eighties-her-latest-subject-is-sarajevo-as-a-new-show-opens-in-london-the-photographer-talks-to-angela-lambert-1426695.html
Leibovitz, A., & Holborn, M. (2006). Annie Leibovitz : a photographer’s life, 1990-2005. Cape.
McCulloch, A. (2006, December 3). Annie Leibovitz. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/books/review/annie-leibovitz.html
Scott, J. (2006, October 6). From Annie Leibovitz: Life, and Death, Examined. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/arts/design/06leib.html
