With all the brouhaha about the Miley Cyrus photos in Vanity Fair, some of you may just be wondering who is Annie Leibovitz anyway. Annie is a celebrated photographer who is known for her close collaboration with her photography subjects.
Annie became interested in the arts in high school and attended San Francisco Art Institute after graduation. She became interested in photography after her family took a trip to Japan and developed her skills while working various jobs.
In 1970, she started working at Rolling Stone. By 1973, publisher Jann Wenner had named her the chief photographer. On December 8, 1980, Annie had a photo shoot with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Lennon was shot and killed five hours later, with the Leibovitz shots being the last professional shots taken of him.
She worked at Rolling Stone until 1983, with her shots defining the look of the magazine. Since 1983, Annie has worked for Vanity Fair. She took the famous pregnant photo of Demi that graced the cover in 1991.
What else has Annie done? She photographed celebrities for an American Express ad in the 80s. In 2007, she was asked by the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, to take official photos of her as the toured Virginia. Even Disney hired Annie in 2007, having her do shots of celebrities in roles and scenes to celebrate Disney World’s “Year of a Million Dreams.”
She’s also responsible for the photo of Whoopi Goldberg lying in a bathtub filled with milk, Dolly Parton vamping for the camera while Arnold Schwarzenegger flexes behind her, the Blues Brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi) with their faces painted blue, and a close up of Who guitarist Pete Townsend with his bleeding hand dripping blood down his face. She has done album covers – Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” and “True Colors” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A. She has published six books filled with her photos.
Annie has defined a generation in print and become the subject of much pop culture as a result. There is a wax figure of her at Madame Tussauds museum in New York, there was a photographer modeled after her in an episode of “The Simpsons,” her name was mentioned in the film Memento when one character was talking about a photograph taken by another, her name was also mentioned in the movie American Psycho, Glenn Close played a photographer on “Will and Grace” that was based on Annie, Rachel pretended that Annie was her fake wedding photographer in “Friends,” and Elliot on “Just Shoot Me” tried to outshoot Annie.