Annie Leibovitz's powerful portrait photography has distinguished her above and
beyond most of her peers for over thirty years. From 1970 to 1983, Leibovitz
was the principal photographer for Rolling Stone magazine. She spearheaded
the movement of music photography away from stage and studio portraiture to intimate,
behind-the-scenes portrayals of musicians. Leibovitz
has continued to document a wide range of music's leading performers. A collection
of these images, American Music (2003), offers a unique survey of the
scope of American musical genres from blues, country and western to hip hop.
Since 1983, Annie Leibovitz has been the principal photographer for Vanity
Fair magazine
and has a longstanding affiliation with Vogue. Her portraits of leading
actors, directors, writers and political figures — including every President
of the United States of the last two decades — are lasting documents of contemporary
culture. She has created campaigns for HBO's The Sopranos, American Express,
Disney, Dove, Tudor, and Gap.
Leibovitz's work often expresses the epitome of human endeavor, such as her in-depth
exploration of the American Ballet Theater, and her meticulous documentation
of the dance partnership of Mark Morris and
Mikhail Baryshnikov.
Leibovitz has created iconic images of some of the world's top-level sports figures
including her portrayal of the U.S. Olympic team in 1996. She has also explored
such universal topics as what it means to be female in
her portraiture of women of all ages and races in
Women (1999).
The first twenty years of her work has been collected in an extensive retrospective
book and exhibition Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1990. Her recent
book, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life 1990-2005, brings
together her assignment and personal work, and is accompanied by an exhibition
that opened at the Brooklyn Museum and is touring internationally. Her lifetime achievements
have recently merited her a place in the acclaimed PBS documentary series American
Masters, aired in January 2007.
