Last night at a private gallery in Chelsea, Annie Leibovitz gave a slideshow based on her new book, Annie Leibovitz at Work
As for those iconic set-ups, Leibovitz usually offers three or four portrait concepts to her subjects but she also encourages them to suggest ideas. Cindy Sherman said, "I'd like to hide if I can," which sparked Leibovitz's group photo of ten women who look like Sherman. (One was an unknown actress, who surprised Leibovitz years later by saying, You've already shot me. Claire Danes.)
Originally Leibovitz didn't like her photo of a shirtless, cigar smoking Arnold on a white horse because it's "primarily about form" and she's "reluctant to have form dictate meaning" but then she realized, with Arnold, "form is meaning." She's been photographing him for more than thirty years, since his Pumping Iron days when he told her he felt he was destined for something more, because he was "always dreaming about dictators."
Of her naked Mark Morris photo in the style of Rousseau's Dream, she said, "I look at this picture now and think, 'Visually, I could fix this.'" At the last minute he decided he didn't want to show his penis. The weather was a particularly hot and he didn't think he was looking his best. Unrelated, at the last minute for what would become John Lennon's last photo shoot, Yoko Ono decided she didn't want to be naked after all, so only Lennon is bare. (Isn't it a much better picture for that?)
In the book, Leibovitz discusses her long delayed conversion to digital photography and the new possibilities of what can be tinkered with, altered, or faked. For her photo of Helen Mirren and Judi Dench together in the front seat of a car, the women were never together.
Of her tremendous output, Leibovitz said, "I feel like there are five pictures a year I like."
She will speak at the Union Square B&N on Thursday night, December 11. Highly recommended.
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