It dawned on me this week that I rarely feature photography on our Designer Desire series… so I’m remedying that this week by highlighting my favourite photographer, Annie Leibovitz.
Annie Leibovitz is a famous (and infamous) American photographer best known for her portraits of celebrities in politics, sports, the arts, fashion and Hollywood.
It was in 1968, as a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, that Leibovitz purchased her first camera.
I have always thought of my work as art… I really thought I could take pictures in this landscape of magazines.
Leibovitz has created some of the most iconic images of the 20th century; Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA album cover, a naked and heavily pregnant Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg in a bathful of milk and the portrait of John Lennon & Yoko Ono – a photograph that was taken a mere 5 hours before he was shot and killed outside his home in New York.
She also photo-documented many great historical events including the Apollo 17 mission, many of the Rolling Stones tours, the 1972 US presidential campaign alongside the journalists Hunter S. Thompson and Timothy Crouse and Richard Nixon’s resignation following the Watergate scandal.
Leibovitz has had an enduring and successful relationship with Rolling Stone (from 1973) and Vanity Fair (from 1983) magazines. While still a student, in 1970, she approached Rolling Stone magazine – just three years after its inception – with some of her photographs. A few of them were published, thus beginning her long career as a photojournalist and embarking on what would become a symbiotic relationship between the young photographer and a magazine famous for reflecting the American zeitgeist. Leibovitz’s first major assignment, in 1971, was for a cover story on John Lennon.
In March 2007, Leibovitz became the first American to create an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. They were commissioned by the Royal Household to celebrate the monarch’s official state visit to the USA.
All image credits: © Annie Leibovitz
