DATA BANK 7ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer.

Early life
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a thirdgeneration American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Central and Eastern [1] Europe. Her father's parents had emigrated from Romania. Her mother, Marilyn, was a modern dance instructor of Estonian Jewish heritage; her father, Sam Leibovitz, was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. The family moved frequently with her father's duty assignments, and she took her first [2] pictures when he was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. In high school, she became interested in various artistic endeavors, and began to write and play music. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied painting. For several years, she continued to develop her photography skills while working various jobs, including a stint on [3] a kibbutz in Amir, Israel, for several months in 1969.

Career
Rolling Stone magazine
When Leibovitz returned to the United States in 1970, she started her career as staff photographer, working for the just launched Rolling Stone magazine. In 1973, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz chief photographer of Rolling Stone, a job she would hold for 10 years. Leibovitz worked for the magazine [3] until 1983, and her intimate photographs of celebrities helped define the Rolling Stone look. While working for Rolling Stone, Leibovitz became more aware of the other magazines. Richard Avedon's portraits were an important and powerful example in her life. She learned that she could work for magazines and still create personal work, which for her was the most important. She sought intimate [4] moments with her subjects, who "open their hearts and souls and lives to you." She was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition [5] of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2009. Photographers such as Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson influenced her during her time at the San Francisco Art Institute. "Their style of personal reportage - taken in a graphic way - was what we were [4] taught to emulate."

The Rolling Stones

Leibovitz photographed The Rolling Stones in San Francisco in 1971 and 1972, and served as the concert-tour photographer for Rolling Stones Tour of the Americas '75. Her favorite photo from the tour [6] was a photo of Mick Jagger in an elevator.

Joan Armatrading
In 1978 Leibovitz became the first woman to photograph Joan Armatrading for an album. She did the photography for Armatrading's fifth studio album To the Limit, spending four days at her house capturing the images.

John Lennon 1980

On December 8, 1980, Leibovitz had a photo shoot with John Lennon for Rolling Stone, promising him [8] that he would make the cover. She had initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone, which is what Rolling Stone wanted, but Lennon insisted that both he andYoko Ono be on the cover. Leibovitz then tried to re-create something like the kissing scene from the Double Fantasy album cover, a picture that she loved. She had John remove his clothes and curl up next to Yoko. Leibovitz recalls, "What is interesting is she said she'd take her top off and I said, 'Leave everything on' not really preconceiving the picture at all. Then he curled up next to her and it was very, very strong. You couldn't help but feel that he was cold and he looked like he was clinging on to her. I think it was amazing to look at the first Polaroid and they were both very excited. John said, 'You've captured our relationship exactly. Promise [9] me it'll be on the cover.' I looked him in the eye and we shook on it." Leibovitz was the last person to [10] professionally photograph Lennonhe was shot and killed five hours later. The photograph was subsequently re-created in 2009 by John and Yoko's son Sean Lennon, posing with his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl, with male/female roles reversed (Sean clothed, Kemp [11][12] naked), and by Henry Bond and Sam Taylor-Wood in their YBApastiche October 26, 1993.

Other projects
In the 1980s, Leibovitz's new style of lighting and use of bold colors and poses got her a position with Vanity Fair magazine. Leibovitz photographed celebrities for an international advertising campaign for American Expresscharge cards, winning her a Clio award in 1987. In 1991, Leibovitz mounted an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. She was the second living portraitist and first woman to show there. Leibovitz had also been made Commandeur de l'Ordre des [13] Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. Also in 1991, Leibovitz emulated Margaret Bourke-White's feat, when she mounted one of the eagle gargoyles on the 61st floor of theChrysler Building in Manhattan, where she photographed the dancer David Parsons cavorting on another eagle gargoyle. Noted Lifephotographer and picture editor John Loengard made a gripping photo of Leibovitz at the climax of her danger. (Loengard was photographing Leibovitz for the New York Times that day). A major retrospective of Leibovitz's work was held at the Brooklyn Museum, Oct. 2006 Jan. 2007. The retrospective was based on her book, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 19902005, and included many of her professional (celebrity) photographs as well as numerous personal photographs of her family, children, and partner Susan Sontag. This show, which was expanded to include three of the official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, then went on the road for seven stops. It was on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from October 2007 to January 2008, and at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco from March 2008 to May 2008. In February 2009

the exhibition was moved to Berlin,Germany. The show included 200 photographs. At the exhibition, Leibovitz said that she doesn't have two lives, career and personal, but has one where assignments and personal pictures are all part of her works. This exhibition and her talk focused on [16] her personal photographs and life. In 2007, The BBC misrepresented a portrait shooting by Leibovitz of Queen Elizabeth II to take the queen's official picture for her state visit to Virginia. This was filmed for the BBCdocumentary A Year with the Queen. A promotional trailer for the film showed the Queen reacting angrily to Leibovitz's suggestion ("less dressy") that she remove her tiara, then a scene of the Queen walking down a corridor, telling an [17] aide "I'm not changing anything. I've had enough dressing like this, thank you very much." The BBC later apologized and admitted that the sequence of events had been misrepresented, as the Queen was [18] in fact walking to the sitting in the second scene. This led to a BBC scandal and a shake-up of ethics training. See The Tiaragate Affair. In 2007, the Walt Disney Company hired her to do a series of photographs with celebrities in various [19][20][21] roles and scenes for Disney Parks "Year of a Million Dreams" campaign.

[14]

[15]

Leibovitz claims she never liked the word "celebrity". "I've always been more interested in what they do than who they are, I hope that my photographs reflect that." She tries to receive a little piece of each [4] subjects personality in the photos. On April 25, 2008, the televised entertainment program Entertainment Tonight reported that 15-year[22][23] old Miley Cyrus had posed topless for a photo shoot with Vanity Fair. The photograph, and subsequently released behind-the-scenes photographs, show Cyrus without a top, her bare back exposed but her front covered with a bedsheet. The photo shoot was taken by photographer Annie [24] Leibovitz. The full photograph was published with an accompanying story on The New York Times' website on April 27, 2008. On April 29, 2008, The New York Times clarified that though the pictures left an impression that she was bare-breasted, Cyrus was wrapped in a bedsheet and was [25] actually not topless. Some parents expressed outrage at the nature of the photograph, which a Disney spokesperson described as "a situation [that] was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year[25] old in order to sell magazines." In response to the Internet circulation of the photo and ensuing media attention, Cyrus released a statement of apology on April 27: "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be artistic and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about."
[25]

Leibovitz also released a statement saying: "I'm sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted," Leibovitz said. "The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup, and I think it is very beautiful."
[25][26]

In October, 2011, Leibovitz had an exhibit in Moscow. In an interview with Rossiya 24, she explained her [27] photography style.

Archive
Since 1977, Leibovitz licensing images have been represented by Contact Press Images, a photojournalism agency based in New York City. She ceased to be represented by Jim Moffat at A Corporation for Art & Commerce in 2009.