Annie Leibovitz at Work

Annie Leibovitz at Work
by Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz at Work
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Book Summary Information

Author: Annie Leibovitz
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-11-18
ISBN: 0375505105
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Random House
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780375505102
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of Annie Leibovitz at Work

Book Review: On A Scale of Five Stars I'd Give This Book At Least A Six!
Summary: 5 Stars

This reviewer and long-time professional and amateur photographer has been waiting for a book containing this information to be published for years. And it's finally here and I for one am very grateful. For years I've wondered how Annie managed to take that incredible picture of a nude John Lennon kissing a fully dressed Yoko Ono while they were both lying on the floor. I had no idea that it was only a single test shot and that it was a Polaroid taken on the afternoon of his murder. That fact alone almost makes me revise my opinion of Polaroid photos. That small Polaroid certainly could be successfully reproduced for other uses.
Interestingly enough, Annie relates how strongly both John and Yoko felt about this image. You'll have to read the book to find out, however, I'm not going to tell.
Another photograph I've always admired was the Whoopi Goldberg picture with her mostly submerged in an old-fashioned bathtub of milk. How in the world did she persuade people to pose in such fantastic situations? Who knew that after only a few frames of her famous portrait of the Blue's Brothers, John Belushi would storm out of the shoot and was so upset with the blue paint she had put on his face that he wouldn't speak to her for six months? The nude profile photograph of a very pregnant Demi Moore was another of those remarkable photos I wanted to know more about. All these and many other nagging questions about the subjects of some of her famous pictures are answered in this autobiographic tome.
Those were only the subjects I was personally most curious about, but I was also interested in how a student in the San Francisco Art Institute who didn't even care much for Rock and Roll music would end up as the photographer for "Rolling Stone." That story had always interested me. How she was asked to go on tour with the Rolling Stones was another riveting tale. To make that coverage even more exciting Andy Warhol and Robert Frank (a photographer who Annie considers almost a God) were also on that particular tour making a documentary film about the Stones. Truman Capote was there too. This was the same young woman who John and Yoko had asked the "Rolling Stones" writer interviewing them "why he had a kid taking all the magazine's pictures?" They were used to being photographed by the most famous photographers in the world. The kid's pictures of them proved to be the most lasting and among their personal favorites.
There is a section in the book about her general photography philosophies and the technical equipment that she used to make her pictures over the years and how it has changed. There is also a section that answers the 10 most often asked questions that people want answered. There is something for everybody.
For a photographer or a "Rock & Roll" music fan, this is a "Must Read." For the average person, it's just a "great read." This is one of the most interesting books about a photographer's life and work that I've ever read and I've read and reviewed hundreds of them.
It was difficult, almost impossible to put aside this page turner once I peeked at the photos and started reading. So many of my long-term questions were answered and I didn't have to die and go to heaven in order to gain that enlightenment. Neither do you, dear reader.

Summary of Annie Leibovitz at Work

The celebrated photographer Annie Leibovitz, author of the New York Times bestselling book A Photographer's Life, provides the stories, and technical description, of how some of her most famous images came to be. Starting in 1974, with her coverage of Nixon's resignation, and culminating with her controversial portraits of Queen Elizabeth II early in 2007, Leibovitz explains what professional photographers do and how they do it. The photographer in this instance is the most highly paid and prolific person in the business. Approximately 90 images are discussed in detail -- the circumstances under which they were taken, with specific technical information (what camera, what settings, what lighting, where the images appeared). The Rolling Stones' tour in 1975, the famous nude session with John Lennon and Yoko Ono hours before Lennon was killed, the American Express and Gap campaigns, Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub of milk, Demi Moore pregnant and naked on the cover of Vanity Fair, and coverage of the couture collections in Paris with Puff Daddy and Kate Moss are among the subjects of this original and informative work.The photos and stories are arranged chronologically, moving from film to digital. Leibovitz's fans and lovers of great photography will find her stories of how one learns to see -- and then how to photograph -- inspiring.
Book Description
?The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it."
?Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz describes how her pictures were made, starting with Richard Nixon's resignation, a story she covered with Hunter S. Thompson, and ending with Barack Obama's campaign. In between are a Rolling Stones Tour, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, The Blues Brothers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Haring, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Patti Smith, George W. Bush, William S. Burroughs, Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth. The most celebrated photographer of our time discusses portraiture, reportage, fashion photography, lighting, and digital cameras.

Amazon Exclusive Essay: Annie Leibovitz on Photography

In 1977, when Jann Wenner, the editor of Rolling Stone, asked me to prepare a fifty-page portfolio of my pictures for the tenth anniversary issue of the magazine, I decided not to simply make a selection of photographs that had been published. I looked at everything I had done since I started working. It was a revelation. For one thing, I had no idea that I had accumulated so many photographs. You lose track of them when you?re working every day. And you see the work in a different way when you look at it from the distance of time. You get a sense of where you are going. You start to see a life.

I had the opportunity to edit my work most thoroughly when I prepared two retrospective books, Annie Leibovitz: 1970?1990 and A Photographer?s Life: 1990?2005. It was thrilling to see that first book laid out chronologically. To see the pictures historically. The second book, A Photographer?s Life, was assembled immediately after the death of Susan Sontag and my father. Editing the book took me through the grieving process.

The books are pure. They are mine. The magazines I work for don?t belong to me. It?s the editor?s magazine, and the editor has every right to use the material the way he or she wants to. It isn?t just that art directors and editors at magazines make selections that I wouldn?t necessarily make. Which they sometimes do. Or that they run pictures too small. Or that they put so much type on the pictures that you can?t see them anymore. Magazines have quite specific needs. It?s a collaboration only so far, which is true of almost all assignment work.

When I began working on my new book, I thought it would be a pamphlet of maybe forty pages or so. I intended to take ten of my photographs and dissect them. They didn?t have to be my most famous pictures, just pictures that I cared about. But as I began going through the material I realized that I might as well be more ambitious. I started to think that I would try to answer every single question anyone has ever asked about how my work is done. To defuse the mystery, and the misconceptions. To explain that it?s nothing more than work. And learning how to see.

So my forty-page pamphlet became a 240-page book with over a hundred photographs in it. It is written for someone like the person I was at the beginning of my career, when I was in art school. A young me. I didn?t know which road I would take. Whether it would be a commercial road, a magazine road, an artistic road, a journalistic road. It?s written for that person. Someone who is interested in photography but isn?t sure how they want to use it.

The book is more emotional than I had imagined it would be. But, most importantly, it is my edit. No one is going to care about, or understand, your work the way you do, and if you are going to explain it you have to be able to present it the way you want to. That?s what a book can do better than any other medium.

See Annie Leibovitz's 15 favorite photography books.

(Photo credit Paul Gilmore)

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