Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz was born on October 2, 1949 and she is an American portrait photographer.
 Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on October 2, 1949, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father's parents had emigrated from Romania. Her mother, Marilyn Edith, née Heit, was a modern dance instructor of Estonian Jewish heritage; her father, Samuel Leibovitz, was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. The family moved frequently with her father's duty assignments, and she took her first pictures when he was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War.

At Northwood High School, she became interested in various artistic endeavors, and began to write and play music. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied painting. For several years, she continued to develop her photography skills while working various jobs, including a stint on a kibbutz in Amir, Israel, for several months in 1969.

rolling stone magazine

When Leibovitz returned to the United States in 1970, she started her career as staff photographer, working for the just launched Rolling Stone magazine. In 1973, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz chief photographer of Rolling Stone, a job she would hold for 10 years. Leibovitz worked for the magazine until 1983, and her intimate photographs of celebrities helped define the Rolling Stone look. While working for Rolling Stone, Leibovitz became more aware of the other magazines. Richard Avedon's portraits were an important and powerful example in her life. She learned that she could work for magazines and still create personal work, which for her was the most important. She sought intimate moments with her subjects, who "open their hearts and souls and lives to you". She was awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2009.

Other projects

• In the 1980s, Leibovitz's new style of lighting and use of bold colors and poses got her a position with Vanity Fair magazine. Leibovitz photographed celebrities for an international advertising campaign for American Express charge cards, which won a Clio award in 1987.
• In 1991, Leibovitz mounted an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. She was the second living portraitist and first woman to show there. Leibovitz had also been made Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.
• Also in 1991, Leibovitz emulated Margaret Bourke-White's feat, when she mounted one of the eagle gargoyles on the 61st floor of the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, where she photographed the dancer David Parsons cavorting on another eagle gargoyle. Noted Life photographer and picture editor John Loengard made a gripping photo of Leibovitz at the climax of her danger. (Loengard was photographing Leibovitz for The New York Times that day).
• A major retrospective of Leibovitz's work was held at the Brooklyn Museum, Oct. 2006 – Jan. 2007. The retrospective was based on her book, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990–2005, and included many of her professional (celebrity) photographs as well as numerous personal photographs of her family, children, and partner Susan Sontag. This show, which was expanded to include three of the official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, then went on the road for seven stops. It was on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., from October 2007 to January 2008, and at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco from March 2008 to May 2008. In February 2009 the exhibition was moved to Berlin, Germany^.[ The show included 200 photographs. At the exhibition, Leibovitz said that she doesn't have two lives, career and personal, but has one where assignments and personal pictures are all part of her works. This exhibition and her talk focused on her personal photographs and life.