|
Ask Annie Leibovitz to choose her own favorite photograph, and she will decline to answer. "I don't have a favorite photograph," she says. "What means the most to me is the body of my work. The accumulation of photographs over the years."
For this special issue, however, Leibovitz has selected images from what she calls her "Master Set." Many are well known,
but not all. Many feature public personalities shot for magazines, but others are highly intimate and deeply private. A few, such as her 1968 image of soldiers at Clark Air Base, made at age 19 with the first camera she ever owned, are of historical interest. All of the images, says Leibovitz, capture some essential aspect of her photography. The Master Set is this remarkable photographer's own articulation of vision—of what makes an Annie picture an Annie picture.
© Annie Leibovitz
June Omura,
Rhinebeck,
New York, 1999.
© Annie Leibovitz
June Omura,
Rhinebeck,
New York, 1999.
© Annie Leibovitz
Susan Sontag,
Petra,
Jordan, 1994.
"Photographs take on new meanings after someone dies. When I made this picture, I wanted Susan';s figure to give a sense of scale to the scene. But now I think of it as reflecting how much the world beckoned her. She was so curious, with a tremendous appetite for experience and a need for adventure. To get to Petra we went through a long, narrow sandstone gorge that opens up suddenly to a view of a huge classical façade carved into a cliff. It';s spectacular, with enormous columns and friezes. That';s where Susan is standing. She loved art, architecture, history, travel, surprises. The photograph epitomizes all of that for me. Discovery."
© Annie Leibovitz
John Lennon
and Yoko Ono, New York City, December 8, 1980.
"I photographed John and Yoko in the late afternoon at their apartment in the Dakota, in a room overlooking Central Park. I was thinking about how people curl up together in bed, and I asked them to pose nude in an embrace. They had never been embarrassed about taking their clothes off. There was frontal nudity on the cover of Two Virgins, the first record they did together. They were artists. John had no problem with my idea, but Yoko said she didn't want to take her pants off for some reason. So I said, 'Oh, leave everything on.' I made a Polaroid of them lying together, and John looked at it and said, 'You've captured our relationship exactly.'
We were going to get together later to go over the transparencies, but that night, as John was returning home from a recording session, a deranged fan shot him. I heard the news from Jann Wenner, the editor of Rolling Stone. John had been taken to Roosevelt Hospital, and I went there and took a few pictures of the crowd that had gathered. Around midnight, a doctor came out. I stood on a chair and photographed him announcing that John was dead. Then I went back to the Dakota and stood with the mourners holding candles.
The picture looks like a last kiss now."
© Annie Leibovitz
Rolling Stones fans,
Cleveland, Ohio, 1975.
© Annie Leibovitz
This page: Patti Smith,
New Orleans, 1978.
|
