While photographer Annie Leibovitz may
be best known for her assignments for magazines – such as much-talked-about
"Vanity Fair" covers like this year’s first photos
of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s daughter, Suri, or the nude
portrait of pregnant actress Demi Moore from 1991 – the new exhibit
at the Brooklyn Museum, "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s
Life, 1990-2005," is a revealing look at not only the artist
on every celeb’s A-list, but also the people who are most important
to her: family and friends.
By "revealing," we mean that the famed shutterbug doesn’t
shy away from turning the camera on herself in this show, which
includes a self-portrait of Leibovitz in her birthday suit, pregnant
with her first child, at age 52.
"You can feel beautiful when you’re pregnant," the
now-57-year-old artist told the crush of paparazzi at the exhibition’s
press opening on Oct. 19. "It’s absolutely true."
Leibovitz, whose work with the stars has turned her into a much-lauded
celebrity herself, includes a wide range of images of American
VIPs in this show. Whether they are actors or generals, her subjects
are captured in poses as formal and traditional as paintings
of royalty hanging in the Prado or Hermitage museums or as relaxed
as a candid snapshot. The ingenuity Leibovitz employs in revealing
her subjects is as breathtaking as her range of styles.
Yet this "assignment work" – 15 years’ worth of portraits
of presidents, artists and musicians – is interspersed with shots
of the photographer’s immediate and extended family as well as
of her longtime companion, author Susan Sontag, and her battles
with cancer.
Literally capturing the human experience, from the delivery room
to the funeral home, the show can only be the work of one thoughtful,
down-to-earth lenswoman.
Despite the deaths of Sontag and her father, which took place
during the years featured in the exhibition, Leibovitz’s life
appears to be an enviable one. She shares her snapshots of travels
in Egypt, Jordan, France and Italy as well as her beaming family
members reunited for the holidays or her parents’ 50th wedding
anniversary. Candids of friends are snapped inside sunshine-filled
rooms with book-lined walls where it seems certain that the literati
congregate and trade bon mots over the right wine.
There are photos that reveal the writer’s life, too. In 1990
Berlin, Leibovitz shot a still life of scraps of paper scrawled
with notes for Sontag’s novel, "The Volcano Lover,"
and another still-life of notes, two years later, on a computer
screen in Manhattan. Although the exhibition notes don’t define
the relationship between the two women, it’s clear that theirs
was a love story.
Surprisingly, there’s no shortage of artists familiar to and
beloved by Brooklynites in this exhibition. A 1998 black-and-white
portrait of Mark Morris shows the enigmatic choreographer-dancer
with a cigarette clamped between his lips. His hair is a wild
mane of dark curls, and his T-shirt is frayed and torn. It’s
a portrait of the youthful artist – years before he opened the
Mark Morris Dance Center in Fort Greene – that is both defiant
and wary of the camera.
There are also color, tight shots of the body parts of Mark Morris
Dance Group’s June Omura, taken in 1999. Those legs that appear
to be flawless, muscled perfection on the stages of the Brooklyn
Academy of Music Opera House or the band shell in Prospect Park,
are revealed by Leibovitz’s lens to be quite vulnerable: scratched
and bruised and run through with blue veins.
During the press conference, Leibovitz betrayed an affinity for
comedians whom she likened to mad geniuses, so perhaps it’s not
surprising that her 1998 portrait of Chris Rock, a Bedford-Stuyvesant
native, would stop a gallery visitor in their tracks. Rock is
photographed in a ringmaster’s ensemble – in white face – against
a circus tent at Floyd Bennett Field. It’s provocative and uncomfortably
comic at once.
In a stunning display of trust – or chutzpah – frequent BAM performer
and avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson is photographed hanging
by her ankles – without a net – over the Coney Island boardwalk
filled with smiling onlookers in 1995.
"Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005"
was born from the book of the same name (Random House, $75),
and they are interesting companion pieces. Yet fans should seek
out the exhibition before it closes in January, because it infuses
the book’s images with life. While the 1992 portrait of actor
Daniel Day-Lewis is mildly arresting on the page, the large print
at the museum brings every detail into focus and gives the thespian
a decidedly more regal air.
In her introduction to the book, Leibovitz writes that this project
is "the closest thing to who I am that I’ve ever done"
and the inclusion of her intimate photographs is a courageous
decision.
Also, Leibovitz chose to blow-up the photos of her assignment
work for the exhibition and kept her personal work snapshot size,
to draw the viewer closer, as if they were indeed looking at
her family album.
At the press conference, Leibovitz said that if she was pressed
to pick a favorite image, it would be the black-and-white portrait
of her mother, taken in 1997, which betrays every crease and
wrinkle in her face. It’s like a map documenting a lifetime of
accumulated wisdom, compassion and lines etched by smiles and
laughter.
The show closes with a room full of enormous blow-ups of Leibovitz’s
muddy, grainy, black-and-white landscapes which can’t help but
seem less than all of the searing, joyful or poignant portraits
that have come before. But this gallery does have a contemplative
quality that quiets the mind before entering the reading room,
the final space that houses Leibovitz’s 2001 portrait of one
of her heroes, photographer Richard Avedon, and another of his
camera.
It seems fitting that Leibovitz pay tribute to one of the artist’s
who inspired her at the end of an exhibition that is certain
to inspire so many of her own fans.
"Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s
Life, 1990-2005" remains on view at the Brooklyn Museum
(200 Eastern Parkway at Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights)
through Jan. 21, 2007. Admission is $8, $4 for students with
valid ID and seniors, and free for children younger than 12.
For more information, visit the Web site www.brooklynmuseum.org
or call (718) 638-5000.
Leibovitz will be honored by the museum’s "Women in Arts"
program on Nov. 8 at 11 am, which is a fundraiser for the Brooklyn
Museum. Tickets to this event, which include admission and parking,
are $125-$1,500. For information, call the Community Committee
at (718) 789-2493.
