Annie Leibovitz
Celebrities are a major part of our popular culture. They take over the cover pages of almost every major magazine, dominate water cooler conversations and the headlines everywhere. Many would even say that celebrities are seen as royalty – and yet every celebrity dreams of having Annie Leibovitz take their picture.
Liebovitz is known for photographing famous people. She lends an air of classic, earthy glamour to her photographs, but is also known for taking more controversial photographs than most.
Reports from numerous fan websites have said that she has been known to use a Canon 1DS M2, a digital Hasselblad, or a Mamiya 645.
Some of her most famous photographs include the photo of Miley Cyrus on the cover of Vanity Fair, the photo of John Lennon & Yoko Ono taken on the morning of his death, and Annie’s reimaginings of an classic Disney scenes.
To examine Leibovitz’s body of work more closely, I chose the photo of Lennon & Ono and two of the photos from the Disney Dream campaign.
In this photo, earlier on in Leibovitz’s career, we can tell alot about her style already. She likes to photograph subjects in a more natural state, not using alot of makeup and trying to capture more candid moments instead of staged ones. She is unafraid of using color – or the absence thereof – to make a point. The relationship between these two is clearly very caring and loving, as we can tell by their body language and the way John is kissing her. They’re very comfortable with each other, and the way Leibovitz chose to photograph them in such natural tones shows this.
I also love this picture, because it shows a lot of the same qualities – Leibovitz’s use of color and trying to not make the picture fully staged. The vivid colors in the picture portray a sense of wonderment, just like Disney’s original Alice in Wonderland film, but there is a darker undertone in the corners of the picture, almost creeping into the bright world of Alice with the dark coat of the Mad Hatter. The fact that not all of the subjects are looking at the camera also shows her tendency to try to catch a certain emotion or moment in time through candid shots.
