Annie Leibovitz is an acclaimed photographer best known for her celebrity portraits. Skilled at capturing her subject’s personality and inner life, her images reflect intimate or staged moments that reveal the playful and expressive aspects of her sitters. “I no longer believe that there is such a thing as objectivity,” she once said. “Everyone has a point of view. Some people call it style, but what we’re really talking about is the guts of a photograph. When you trust your point of view, that’s when you start taking pictures.” The artist studied at the San Francisco Art Institute with the intention of becoming an art teacher, and took night classes in photography. In 1970, she began working at Rolling Stone Magazine, and soon became the first woman to be named chief photographer. Leibovitz famously captured the last image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono before his death in 1980. In 1991, she became the first woman ever to have a solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 2006, she was made a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She has received the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the first Creative Excellence Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in London. She has been designated a Living Legend by the United State Library of Congress and in 2024 was inducted into the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ (American, 1949)
Archival pigment print, printed later
Acquired in 2012
