photo: Annie Leibovitz. The Early Years. 1970–1983
Annie Leibovitz. The Early Years. 1970–1983 is a carefully and personally curated collection and provides a vivid account of both Leibovitz's development as an artist and of a crucial era.
Annie Leibovitz started working as a photographer in the early seventies, a turbulent and hectic time in America. At that time, the possibilities within photojournalism were not yet very strict, so she could still shoot images in situations that would be more inaccessible today.
Her portraits of politicians, artists, athletes, businesspeople and royalty form an overview of our history, anchored in our collective consciousness by both the individuality of their subjects and Leibovitz's inimitable style.
This book is the catalog of her 2017 exhibition at the LUMA Foundation in Arles, France. Annie Leibovitz: The Early Years, 1970–1983 returns to Leibovitz's origins.
It begins with a moment of artistic revelation: a spontaneous shot during her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, which made Leibovitz decide to switch from painting to photography.
Leibovitz's reportage-style photo stories for Rolling Stone, where she began working while still a student, document turbulent political, cultural, and countercultural developments, such as the Vietnam War protests, the launch of Apollo 17, the 1972 presidential campaign, Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, and the Rolling Stones on tour in 1975.
Leibovitz won the trust of prominent figures and celebrities, and the book's pages are filled with many famous faces, including Muhammad Ali, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ken Kesey, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Didion and Debbie Harry, as well John Lennon and Yoko Ono, captured in their now iconic embrace just hours before Lennon was murdered.
Throughout the book, the portraits and reports are linked to images of cars, driving, and even a series on California highway patrols. In many ways it is also a cheerful collection of photographs of life on the road - the hectic pace, the chance encounters, the meditative possibilities.
And with the amount of historical images, it is also an ode to the past and to a young photographer caught up in a culture that was itself in transition.
Annie Leibovitz is one of the most influential photographers of our time. She started working as a photojournalist for Rolling Stone in 1970 while still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. By 1983, when she left Rolling Stone for a new life at Vanity Fair, she was already closely identified with her signature conceptual, theatrical style.
In the decades that followed, she has worked at Vanity Fair and Vogue and in independent projects across many photographic genres, developing a large body of work that includes portraits of actors, directors, writers, musicians, athletes, and political and business figures, as well as fashion photographs. She has published several books and exhibited extensively. She is a Commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and has been designated a Living Legend by the U.S. Library of Congress.
In 2008, her sister Barbara made the beautifully edited documentary Life Through A Lens.
Annie Leibovitz. The Early Years. 1970–1983 - Annie Leibovitz, Luc Sante, Jann S. Wenner
Pages: 182
Price: €37.59
Publisher: Taschen
ISBN: 9783836571890
