ANNIE LEIBOVITZ

Leibovitz’s work makes use of visual references drawn from a wide range of sources—from literature and film, to the history of photography and the long tradition of formal portraiture within the history of art. On view in the exhibition, her portrait of sculptor and installation artist Rachel Feinstein, originally shot for Vogue, shows the sitter as both muse and mother in a way that highlights the dualities of female experience. In this intimate image, Feinstein’s small daughter meets the viewer’s gaze directly, in much the same way as her mother’s, in a composition that recalls and recontextualizes such historical paintings as Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s 1840 masterpiece La Grande Odalisque.

The exhibition also includes key images from Leibovitz’s first couture shoot in Paris for Vogue, which featured Kate Moss and Sean Combs in a visual narrative that straddled two dramatic worlds: rap culture and high fashion. In scenes from another ambitious shoot for Vogue, Leibovitz paid homage to The Wizard of Oz. Created in collaboration with the magazine’s fashion editor Grace Coddington, this series cast actress Keira Knightley in the role of Dorothy Gale, with celebrated contemporary artists Francesco Clemente with Alba Clemente, Chuck Close, John Currin, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Brice Marden, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker assuming the roles of central characters from L. Frank Baum’s beloved 1900 children’s novel and the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer adaptation for the screen. This series positions Leibovitz distinctly within a specific lineage of formal portraiture in which artists’ sitters have assumed historical or literary personae and dressed in costume, hinting at unseen aspects of their identities, or reflecting upon their societal contexts.

Clothing and accessories have played an essential role in both the formal construction of image and the conveyance of personality throughout Leibovitz’s oeuvre, a fact she reflects on in her preface to the new book Annie Leibovitz: Wonderland, to be released by Phaidon on 18 November. She writes, ‘Looking back at my work, I see that fashion has always been there. It is the driving force in a portrait—whether it is Jerry Garcia in a black T-shirt, or Patti Smith in the much-imitated style that has endured for decades, or the Rolling Stones...Fashion plays a part in the scheme of everything, but photography always comes first for me. The photograph is the most important part. And photography is so big that it can encompass portraiture, reportage, family photographs, fashion. There are so many ways to use photography...I’ve never thought of myself as a fashion photographer, but my work for ‘Vogue’ fueled the fire for a kind of photography that I might not otherwise have explored.’

About the artist

Leibovitz is the recipient of many honours. In 2006, she was made a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She has received the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the first Creative Excellence Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the Centenary Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in London, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Award to Distinguished Women in the Arts, the Wexner Prize, and the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. She has been designated a Living Legend by the United States Library of Congress. She lives in New York with her three children, Sarah, Susan and Samuelle.

Several collections of Leibovitz’s work have been published. They include, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, (1983); Annie Leibovitz: Photographs 1970–1990, (1991); Olympic Portraits (1996); Women, (1999), in collaboration with Susan Sontag; American Music, (2003); A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005, (2006); Annie Leibovitz at Work, (2008; revised edition 2018), a first-person commentary on her career; and Pilgrimage, (2011); Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016, (2017); Annie Leibovitz: The Early Years, 1970-1983, (2018); Annie Leibovitz: Wonderland, (2021).