Self Portrait
October 2, 1949– Annie Leibovitz was always my choice to shoot the long planned cover for my first album Low Hanging Fruit. I would have given the world’s greatest living portrait photographer full creative carte blanche, trusting her to bring out the authentic Stephen.
In 1970, Leibovitz approached Jann Wenner, the gay founding editor of Rolling Stone Magazine, which he’d recently launched & was operating out of San Francisco. Impressed with her portfolio, Wenner gave Leibovitz her first assignment: photograph John Lennon. Leibovitz’s B&W cover portrait of the former Beatle graced on the January 21, 1971 issue. 2 years later she was named the magazine’s chief photographer.
In 1980, Rolling Stone sent Leibovitz to photograph Lennon & Yoko Ono, who had recently released their album Double Fantasy. For that portrait, Leibovitz imagined that the pair would pose naked. Lennon took off his clothing, but Ono refused to take off her pants. A disappointed Leibovitz told Ono to leave her clothes on. Leibovitz:
“We took a single Polaroid & the 3 of us knew it was profound right away.”
The result shows Lennon nude & curled around a fully clothed Ono. It would be iconic anyway, but just hours later Lennon was murdered, shot dead in front of his residence at the famed Dakota Apartments on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The photograph was the cover of the Rolling Stone Lennon commemorative issue. In 2005, the American Society Of Magazine Editors named it The Best Magazine Cover of the 20th Century.
In 1983, Leibovitz left Rolling Stone to work for Vanity Fair. With a wider choice of subjects, her portraits for Vanity Fair ranged from Presidents to writers to rock stars. Her covers for the magazine have featured Leibovitz’s stunning & frequently controversial portraits of celebrities: a naked & very pregnant Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg sitting in a bathtub of milk & this summer, & Ms. Jenner’s Call Me Caitlyn reveal are among the most remembered. Always noted for her ability to make her subjects become physically involved in her work, one of my my most favorite Leibovitz portraits is of the late, great gay artist Keith Haring, who painted himself like one of his canvases for his photograph.
At the end of the 1980s, Leibovitz worked on a several campaigns that changed the advertising world, including the terrific, revealing American Express “Membership” ads featuring her portraits of celebrity cardholders, including Elmore Leonard, Tom Selleck, & Luciano Pavarotti. This work earned her the Clio Award, the advertising biz’s Oscar.
“I don’t have two lives. This is one life, & the personal pictures & the assignment work are all part of it. I try for most intimate, it tells the best story, & I care about it.”
Leibovitz has been made a Commandeur des Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France. She has been designated a Living Legend by the Library Of Congress. Her first museum show Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990 was held in at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. in 1991 & it toured internationally for 6 years. At the time she was only the second living portraitist & the only woman to have been featured in an exhibition by that hallowed institution.
In 1998, Leibovitz met writer Susan Sontag while photographing the noted writer for her book Aids & Its Metaphors. The pair of titan talents became lovers, but kept separate apartments. Leibovitz:
“I remember going out to dinner with her & just sweating through my clothes because I thought I couldn’t talk to her. Sontag told me: ‘You’re good, but you could be better’.”
Sontag’s influence on Leibovitz was profound. In 1993, Leibovitz traveled to Sarajevo during the Balkans War, a trip that she admits would not have taken place except for Sontag’s insistence. Among her work from that trip is Sarajevo: Fallen Bicycle Of A Teenage Boy Just Killed By A Sniper, a profoundly powerful B&W photo of a bike collapsed on blood-smeared pavement. Sontag, who wrote the accompanying essay, also conceived Leibovitz’s book Women (1999). The book includes images of famous females along with those not so well-known. Celebrities Susan Sarandon & Diane Sawyer share pages with female soldiers in basic training & Las Vegas showgirls in & out of costume.
The couple was together 15 years, until Sontag left this world at the end of 2004. Leibovitz gave birth to her first child, a daughter, at 51 years old. 5 months after Sontag’s passing she had twin girls. Leibozitz chronicled the end of Sontag’s time on our pretty planet. Including controversial, often contentious photographs of Sontag in her hospital room at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, barely recognizable but unmistakably dying. At around the same time, she was also photographing her 91 year old father as he was losing his battle with cancer in 2005.
“Every single image that someone would have a possible problem with or have concerns about, I had them too. This wasn’t like a flippant thing. I had the very same problems, & I needed to go through it. The fact that they came out of a moment of grief gave the work dignity.”
Leibovitz was never been exactly forthcoming about being gay. Choosing the closet or not, my admiration for her work knows no bounds. It is difficult for me to find a favorite photograph to be named my favorite, this morning I would choose Meryl Streep for Rolling Stone.
If you can only afford to have one of her many books of pictures, choose Annie Leibovitz At Work. My copy now lives at The Husband’s shop, Boys’ Fort, in Downtown Portland. If you are around, stop in & have a seat on a vintage Chesterfield & have a look.
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