Celebrity photos merge with reality photos of a photographer’s life
Click on photo to enlarge or download: Jamie Foxx, Culver Studios, Culver City, California, 2004. Photograph © Annie Leibovitz. From Annie Leibovitz: “A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005.” Courtesy of Vanity Fair.WASHINGTON - For more than 35 years, Annie Leibovitz has allowed the world to witness the private lives of celebrities, cabinet members and people affected by war around the planet through her camera. For the first time, viewers have a chance to peer into her world.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art opens a new exhibit this week, "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005," featuring a mix of photos from the photographer's magazine work and her non-public life. Leibovitz described it as editorial work blended with "emotional work."
The show, featuring more than 200 photos, including never-before-seen photos of the Queen of England, began a year and a half ago at the Brooklyn Museum in New York and makes its fourth stop in Washington on an international tour of nine cities.
"This show came out of a moment in my life," Leibovitz said as she escorted reporters through the exhibit earlier this week. "I'm very, very proud of this show, but it's a difficult thing to look back at. I brace myself to face it again."
The celebrated American photographer is most famous for her portraits of famous people in Rolling Stone, Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as Gap and American Express ads.
"The best portraits resonate in their humanization of people," said Paul Roth, curator of photography and media arts at the Corcoran, of Leibovitz's work.
The show tracks photographer's private life, including the death of her father, her first pregnancy and the later birth of twins using a surrogate, and the illness and death of longtime lover, author Susan Sontag.
Sprinkled among personal prints of Leibovitz's intimates are famous faces, such as Brad Pitt, Jamie Foxx, and the iconic 1991 picture of a pregnant Demi Moore naked, holding her belly.
"I've come of age in what I'm doing," Leibovitz said. "You learn the most from your work. It tells you where to go next."
Click on photo to enlarge or download: My Parents with My Sisters Paula and Barbara and Paula’s Son, Peter’s Pond Beach, Wainscott, Long Island, 1992, Photograph © Annie Leibovitz. From “Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005.”Arranged in a timeline, the smaller prints are from the photographer's own family tree, while recognizable faces are plastered to the walls like posters.
Leibovitz explained that this was done so visitors would have to walk up close to her family and friends to experience "intimacy" with the images.
"I keep returning to chronology," Leibovitz said. "It seems to hold things together. I use famous people as punctuation."
The exhibit stems from the photographer's book of the same title released last year, a nine-pound, 400-page memoir.
The contrast between celebrity and personal pieces reveals Leibovitz's talent for merging traditional black and white photography between colors photos that have an air of popular culture and records the artist's life over 15 years.
There are portraits of President Bush and members of his administration in the White House alongside a photo of Michael Moore and his film crew, Bill Clinton's first night in office, shots of a war-torn Sarajevo, the immediate aftermath of the Twin Towers collapsing and Johnny Depp and Kate Moss as a couple in the mid-‘90s.
Arranged amid these photos are deeply personal shots of her life, such as a 51-year-old naked Leibovitz, pregnant with her first child, the nearly incapacitated Sontag, frail and losing her hair from cancer, and finally, her dead body lying in an open coffin.
"It's a love story," said Leibovitz, 58. "It's life, death. Real life is going on and, it's as interesting if not more interesting [than celebrity photography]."
The show ends with large-scale conceptual art pieces of landscape, inspired by the Ansel Adams exhibit across the hall. Leibovitz said Adams is one of her greatest influences.
Leibovitz plans to continue work on her magazine portraits, while raising her children.
"My photography has always been front and center and saved me from going off and doing side projects," Leibovitz said. "I feel very responsible for my work. Kind of like the queen and her duty. I'm very lucky to have been doing this for all this time."
The exhibit runs from Saturday to Jan. 13. The Corcoran, at 17th Street and New York Avenue NW, across from the White House, charges admission.
