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(born 1949, Westbury, Connecticut)
As the daughter of an Air Force lieutenant and one of six children, Annie Leibovitz and her family moved many times during her childhood. Because of her travels, views from the family's car rear window became her first camera. In the late 1960s, Leibovitz spent time on a kibbutz and an architectural dig at King Solomon's temple in Israel. And, she bought her first camera while traveling with her mother in Japan in 1968.
With her early life experiences in hand, Leibovitz studied painting and received a degree in fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1971, but she continued to photograph. Her work documenting a peace demonstration, and in particular, a photograph of Allen Ginsberg caught the attention of art director Robert Kingsbury at Rolling Stone magazine. She was hired by the magazine in 1970 and became their chief photographer in 1973. During her tenure at the magazine, she was the official photographer for the Rolling Stones rock band on their 1975 world tour. One of her most famous magazine covers featured a photograph of a nude John Lennon hugging a clothed Yoko Ono, taken in 1980, just hours before Lennon's tragic death.
After leaving Rolling Stone in 1983, Leibovitz began working for Vanity Fair. Her subjects included presidents, famous authors, teenage idols, and numerous actors and other celebrities. Among the most controversial portraits featured on Vanity Fair were covers of a pregnant, nude, Demi Moore, and of actress Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub of milk.
Leibovitz contributed to the success of several prestigious and often award-winning advertising campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s. She did a series of celebrity portraits for American Express in the 1980s and was awarded a CLIO advertising award for this series in 1988. Leibovitz also photographed celebrities with milk mustaches for the much touted “got milk?” campaign, which began in 1994. Her advertising work is widely acclaimed, and she was inducted into the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1999.
During the past two decades, Leibovitz's success as a photographer has led to highly regarded publications, exhibitions, and a variety of projects outside of her much celebrated magazine work. Among her more notable accomplishments were: the publication of her first book, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs (1983); as official portrait photographer for the World Cup Games in Mexico (1984); as the second woman to receive a retrospective exhibition of her work at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (1991); her documentation of the aftermath of war in Sarajevo, Bosnia (1994); as official photographer of the 1996 Olympics (her black-and-white photos of American Olympians were featured in the book Olympic Portraits); a collaboration with essayist Susan Sontag on the book Women (1999) and as a recipient of the “Living Legend” award from the Library of Congress (2000).
In the past several years, Leibovitz has continued to contribute to Vanity Fair magazine where her work can be seen regularly. Her projects have continued with the traveling exhibition and publication American Music organized by the Experience Music Project, Seattle, in 2004. For this project, Leibovitz focused on American roots music, the individuals who are part of its history, as well as younger artists who have been influenced by these legends. Her subjects include B. B. King, the late Johnny Cash and June Carter, Willie Nelson, Pete Seeger, Etta James and Dolly Parton; as well as popular music legends including Bruce Springsteen; Eminem, Aretha Franklin, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith and the White Stripes. The exhibition showcases 70 portraits of recent work and classic images from the late 1970s and 1980s that are central to the theme of music, a subject fundamental to Leibovitz's long and celebrated career.
Her latest book and exhibition Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005 (release date October 2006; exhibition opens at the Brooklyn Museum also October 2006) will feature work from both her professional career and her personal life.
PHOTO: B.B. King, Club Ebony, Indianola, Mississippi, 2000. Copyright © 2000 by Annie Leibovitz.