Annie Leibovitz Revisits Her Early Years

I saw a Leibovitz exhibit in Amsterdam while on a business trip decades ago. Photographs never exhibited before, to my knowledge. One of Mick Jagger's wrist showing three stitched and healed cuts, one old, one not so old, one not yet months old. And a film of her shooting Baryshnikov, his doing a split jump over and over in front of a white background until she got it at its top, and then of his reclining, head out to the end, with no obvious safety rope, on one of the Chrysler building eagles, her and her camera in the lighting pit out on the next eagle. to take the shot I am on Social Security, little more. Live day to day. I'm looking into how much it will cost to get to LA to see this exhibit.

In the annals of the history of photography, there are so many underrated, far more talented, original, experimental, and bold photographers who deserve attention-, but here we are with another story about Leibovitz who is now a cult-celebrity-overexposed figure. Why not do a profile on Tina Modotti?

I remember when Annie Liebowitz was invited by the Rolling Stones to accompany them on tour. I have a book of her photos of said tour. The photos captured the Stones on stage and off stage. Brilliant work by her.

The is nothing more powerful to me than a B & W photo that captures a moment in time - with a lifetime of experiences, a lifetime of pain, suffering, joy, whimsy all etched across a face.

Time after time, an icon capturing other icons in moments that capture their true essences. Sounds so simple. Until you try it just once.

Photography is a cultural product just like painting and sculpture, or classic music, created by Bach, Beethoven and The Beatles. Ms. Leibovitz captivated the hearts of many young persons like us with her world famous John Lennon.photographs. And we love to hear "Imagine" while enjoying those images. Or "What a wonderful world" while watching the photo she composed for Louis Armstrong. We love her photographs.

Liebowitz creates staged photos that are more about her than about the subject. She is creating fictional drama in her pictures....obscuring the subject's true personality with her own. It worked well for a dramatic person like Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone, but it's all staged to an outrageous degree and is not insightful. It's producing and staging rather than photography.

When is this coming to New York??

From the pictures on those 24 walls, it looks like one would get a strained neck from craining to inspect the reproductions at the top margins … I would hope that the top copies are uninteresting (or that these 24 walls are only six or 7 feet tall), So that an individual could possibly view the whole gallery in less than… Perhaps a couple hours? Nevertheless, I always enjoy viewing Annie’s work, and would take the requisite time to at least cursorily view the early work; it might be kind of nostalgic,, but looking back to when I had my head firmly implanted up between my legs, to find out - again - what was happening in history (& I was not paying attention) is always an pleasure and education. for me. And I think that tricky Dick got a expensive taxi ride out of the White House after the resignation (Does anybody know how much it cost to spin up those rotors on that presidential helicopter?) ... I guess it was a last courtesy… Actually kind of miss the old tricky Dick, comparatively speaking.

The genius of Annie Leibovitz is that it can only be seen by a certain type of person. What kind of person is that? One that likes other people. Her photography is like a decoder ring that weeds out empathy. If you delight in the human experience, you have the mans with which to appreciate the subtleties of what she conveys about her subjects: A subtle twist of the lip in a rueful smile. A hand artfully placed on a lap. The elegant curve of a neck. An ironic twinkle in an otherwise serious eye. The juxtaposition of the mundane with the iconic. The unexpected aggrandizement of the everyday amidst the reduction of the grand. The surprises, the reveals, the every day truths we can otherwise walk past--all of that, she captures and makes you stop to look. If you are a seeker and an emplorer of the human experience, Annie delivers. ....and if you don't, then she is just a person who takes photos of other people. That's ok, too.

As a kid, reading Rolling Stone, it became natural for me to look at a great photo and think, “That’s Annie “ and be right. They were beautiful and cool! As an adult, I can say they weren’t only cool but revealing— not only by often unmasking a persona, but showing us a moment of humor with whoever her subject was. Her subjects were clearly comfortable with her (not even including the heartbreakingly John and Yoko in 1980). A comfortable situation. I’m a very respectful fan, and I hope to see this exhibition. And, yeah, I can handle the number of photos displayed. Thanks Ms. Leibovitz!

One picture (they say) is worth a thousand words. I used to look down (just a bit) at photography. I mean: what is there to it? You hold up that big (or small) contraption--press a little button--and voila! Nothing to it. Then--I tried taking pictures of a Christmas party. (This for the school yearbook when I was a teacher). My, did I change my opinion! That was hard work. You get your picture lined up and--voila!--it disintegrates. Maybe a master photographer has a kind of fluidity. Gliding along, so to speak. Capturing unforgettable images on the rebound. But whatever it is-- --I sure didn't have it. A last thought: That photo of Mr. Nixon's helicopter taking off. And the red carpet being diligently rolled up. Boy--that picture IS worth a thousand words! Reminds me of an account I read long ago of Stalin's funeral (in 1953). The longtime dictator was duly laid to rest. Some giant poster bearing that familiar face (impassive eyes, mustache) was being taken down. "Well," said one worker to another, "we won't be needing THIS one anymore." No. I think not. "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave Await alike th' inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead by to the grave." Thanks. Fabulous article.

4000 pictures makes the show a meaningless experience in sensory overload. A show of her best 100 is something I would think about seeing.

I'm sorry. I wish I could find this woman and/or her work worthy of so much adulation but, sadly, I do not.

I find the thought of a show with 4000 prints horrifying. You can't look at 4000 anything. You'll be visually exhausted before your 1/4 of the way through. Liebowitz's work is of a type that invites skimming more than more careful looking, but still, 4000 is ridiculous, unless the point of the show is a more high-concept surround-you-with-more-visual-noise-than-you-can-take-in kind of thing. Which doesn't sound super interesting.

Love the photos and the gallery presentation. How to best display photographs while on a budget can be a difficult problem. Would love to visit this exhibit. Thanks

It's great Annie Leibovitz is having a show at Hauser & Wirth. I would like to point out, though, that the art world has long accepted photographers as artists and that this show should be addressed on the merits of her work and not on an evolving phenomenon regarding galleries promoting photographers as artists. That began long ago and photography now resides comfortably as an equal among the arts: Richard Avedon, Andreas Gursky, and Philip-Lorca di Corcia have been represented by Gagosian for almost a decade; Thomas Ruff at Zwirner since 2007: Nan Goldin at Matthew Marks since 1998; Rineke Dijkstra since 2003. Not to mention the major retrospective exhibitions of photographers in the most consequential museums of the world that have occurred since the year 2000.

sounds like she's an artist - 'can't explain it very well - but here's some stuff I did ...'

As much as I love Annie Leibovitz's work, I disliked this article. I thought it a shallow glance at a deep artistic effort.

She is an American Master and, my god, I’m surprised this wasn’t put together decades ago.

There's nobody like her! A genius behind the lens.

I hope this comes to NY.

I always thought the most evocative of her political pictures was the one of Dan Rather sitting in front of the White House after Nixon resigned. You can almost feel the weight on Rather's shoulders.

Annie rocks. Always has, always will. Keep on keepin' on...