Written by Linda
November 29, 2008
By photographing the rich and famous, and chronicling pop culture, Annie Leibovitz is one of the few photographers (if not the only one) that has become a pop culture icon herself.
Some of Annie Leibovitz's images are seared into pop-culture lore: the photo of a naked John Lennon entwined around clothed Yoko One; a pregnant, nude Demi Moore, and Demi wearing only a painted body suit; Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub full of milk. The documentary Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens, directed by her own sister Barbara Leibovitz, gives us a peek into the photographer's life, but also serves as a sort of document of pop culture itself since the 1960s when she got her start.
Annie, an Army brat, was born on the East Coast but grew up all over the place, including in the Philippines when her father was stationed there. She ended up moving to San Francisco, attending the Art Institute there, and found herself at the right place at the right time. With the launch of Rolling Stone magazine in the "Summer of Love," she worked her way into becoming the magazine's main photographer, following rock bands, social movements, and politicians. She even followed the magazine to New York City years later when it had outgrown its San Francisco roots.
For all of her career-making identity at Rolling Stone, she was launched into a different stratosphere as a celebrity photographer when brand-new Vanity Fair magazine lured her with the promise of being that magazine's official photographer, a sort of branding between her style of unusual celeb photos combined with the new high-end celebrity and political journalism that the magazine wanted to offer. If her Rolling Stone work wasn't already famous enough, it was her work with Vanity Fair (including the controversial Demi Moore cover photos) that made Leibovitz one of the few photographers that is as famous as her subjects.
Because it is directed by her sister Barbara, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens has an unusual intimacy with Annie's early years, and includes lots of fun old film footage of the brood as children, as well as pics from their times abroad. And I'm sure in her interviews, Annie is a lot more open with Barbara when talking about her own life. But I think with the family connection, the film also tiptoes around some other topics that the average viewer would find interesting. For instance, Leibovitz's relationship with writer Susan Sontag is both covered while at the same time is kind of cryptic, and it is never explained how at 50, Leibovitz suddenly started a family, and now has three children (I had to look this one up on Wikipedia: she had one biological child at the age of 51, then twins through a surrogate).
But all said, it is Leibovitz's amazing work that speaks for itself. It is fascinating to see the work that goes into one of her photo shoots (the preparation of Vanity Fair's Marie Antoinette spread, featuring Kirsten Dunst, is shown) and Leibovitz's own extreme efficiency of actually taking the photos (after only 10 minutes of shooting, Dunst exclaims, "That was IT?!?!"). The film is filled with celebrity and politician interviews that laugh with horror at the amount of preparation that was put into some of the photos (all for a few minutes of shooting, but always with fantastic results). As a viewer, what you really should do is grab a couple of Leibovitz's coffee-table books, thumb through them at your leisure, then watch this documentary as a sort of background companion piece. Because really, the photos are what it's all about.
