Annie Leibovitz

‘The Early Years, 1970 – 1983, Archive Project No. 1 and Wonderland,’ is a comprehensive exhibition of photographic prints selected by the artist from her early years seen alongside selected iconic fashion images from the past two decades. Leibovitz’s prolific output, and her inventive approach to photography itself, position her distinctly within the traditions and trajectory of American portraiture during the twentieth century.

Annie Leibovitz bought her first camera in the summer of 1968, after her freshman year at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1970, while still a student, she approached ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine – just three years after its inception – with a few of her photographs. Two of the images were published and she soon embarked on what would develop into a symbiotic relationship between the young photographer and a magazine that became famous for reflecting the American zeitgeist.

‘The Early Years, 1970 – 1983, Archive Project No. 1’ presents images of major political moments in the United States, including the 1972 presidential campaign, which she covered with the writer Hunter S. Thompson. Leibovitz’s unobtrusive lens implicates both the photographer and her peers as significant actors and contributors to events. In a poignant photograph taken on the day Richard Nixon resigned as president, her camera records the take-off of his helicopter from the White House lawn.

In the late 1970s she had begun using a medium-format camera that produced square photographs. The camera was appropriate for shooting set-up portraits with a strobe light. Leibovitz staged planned portraits based on a straightforward idea often stemming from a deeply personal collaboration with her subjects. Evidencing a level of uncanny intimacy and uncommon depth of engagement, this relationship can be seen in one of her most celebrated photographs on view, in which a naked John Lennon clutches Yoko Ono. The portrait, made on December 8, 1980, was meant to serve as an intimate emblem of the couple’s relationship. When Lennon was killed just hours after the photo was taken, it became a powerful visual memorial.

The exhibition continues on the lower floor of the gallery, with photographic prints selected by the artist from her acclaimed body of work made over the past two decades, including key images from Leibovitz’s first couture shoot in Paris for ‘Vogue,’ which featured Kate Moss and Sean Combs in a visual narrative that straddled two dramatic worlds: rap culture and high fashion. In scenes from another ambitious shoot for ‘Vogue,’ Leibovitz paid homage to ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ This series positions Leibovitz distinctly within a specific lineage of formal portraiture in which artists’ sitters have assumed historical or literary personae and dressed in costume, hinting at unseen aspects of their identities, or reflecting upon their societal contexts.