Annie Leibovitz strides onto the Wiltern stage to the thunderous cheers of 1,500 mostly female fans. She takes her place at the podium, a small, casually dressed figure on a big stage. On the screen behind her are images of the matching covers of her new two-book set, \u201cAnnie Leibovitz: Women.\u201d Volume 1 is her 1999 collection. Volume 2 has 100 new photos captured in the 25 years since. Taken together, the slipcased set zooms in on the past quarter century of American womankind, rendered in 250 images of dancers, actors, astronauts, artists, politicians, farmers, writers, CEOs, philanthropists, soldiers, musicians, athletes, socialites and scientists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe book was Susan\u2019s idea,\u201d Leibovitz says on Tuesday, referring to writer Susan Sontag, her partner until Sontag\u2019s death in 2004. \u201cI thought doing a photo book about women was a bad idea, like going out and photographing the ocean. But then I heard what Hillary Clinton said at the U.N. Conference on Women in 1995 \u2014 \u2018Women\u2019s rights are human rights, and human rights are women\u2019s rights\u2019 \u2014 and I reconsidered.\u201d Applause shakes the Wiltern rafters.<\/p>\n
An image from Volume 2 appears, featuring a somber-looking Sontag. \u201cThis is the last formal portrait of Susan,\u201d Leibovitz says. \u201cYou could think she\u2019s projecting a sense of strength, but really, she was mad at me for making her go outside to take the picture.\u201d The crowd roars with laughter.<\/p>\n
Think of Leibovitz, and some legendary photographs spring to mind. Whoopi Goldberg submerged in a milk-filled bathtub on the cover of Vanity Fair, July 1984. Also on VF covers: Michael Jackson, fittingly clothed and shot in black-and-white, in 1989. Demi Moore, fully pregnant and fully naked, two years later. But the photo that remains Leibovitz\u2019s most iconic to date is the January 1981 cover of Rolling Stone featuring a nude, fetal John Lennon wrapped around Yoko Ono. \u201cJohn showed up naked,\u201d Leibovitz tells the audience. \u201cYoko wanted to wear clothes, so she\u2019s fully dressed.\u201d Leibovitz took the Polaroid on Dec. 8, 1980 \u2014 a few steps away from, and a few hours before, Lennon was shot and killed by former fan Mark David Chapman.<\/p>\n
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Joan Baez in Woodside, Calif., in 2007, from \u201cAnnie Leibovitz: Women.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Annie Leibovitz)<\/p>\n
In Volume 2, we find a barefoot Joan Baez sitting in a tree strumming her guitar; a pregnant Rihanna draped in jewels and fur; Billie Eilish dreaming over a journal with pencil in hand; Shonda Rhimes with her feet up on a desk as massive as her oeuvre; and an uninhibited Michelle Obama as we\u2019ve never seen her before: chin raised, eyes closed, hair tossed back, T-shirt and jeans parted to reveal her midriff. \u201cI was in shock,\u201d Leibovitz says. \u201cBut the first lady\u2019s assistant was standing next to me, shouting, \u2018That\u2019s my first lady!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Familiar faces dominate, but woven between them are portraits of \u201cregular\u201d American women. A botanist precedes Oprah Winfrey, a philanthropist and a rabbi surround the founder of a Skid Row nonprofit, the reproductive rights activists of Moms Demand Action share space with a nude Lady Gaga. \u201cI told her to bring a slip,\u201d Leibovitz comments. \u201cI\u2019d rather people keep their clothes on at this point in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Volume 2 includes one essay each from activist Gloria Steinem, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Leibovitz herself. Steinem writes, \u201cThis book will help us to discover our adventurous true selves. \u2026 We are atoms whirling in place, affected by and affecting those near and far from where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adichie agrees. \u201cTaken as a whole,\u201d she writes, \u201cthese photographs create a deeply moving experience, they refute the singular lens, they revel in plurality\u2019s power, and because of \u2014 or perhaps in spite of \u2014 their wide range, they are infused with a spirit that is communal, collective, even unifying \u2014 and ultimately hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Leibovitz concludes the second book. \u201cFor this volume I thought about issues that are important today,\u201d she writes. In 2016, when she was beginning work on Volume 2, the notoriously cloistered Leibovitz told a New York Times reporter about the nationwide \u201ctalking circles\u201d she and Steinem had organized, in which women shared their experiences with issues including sexual violence, technology and human rights. \u201cTalking in groups like that, it brings me to tears,\u201d Leibovitz told the reporter, adding that the new work she was making for Volume 2 was more \u201cdemocratic.\u201d Volume 2 is indeed more diverse, possibly in response to a widely discussed critique of Leibovitz\u2019s photographs of Black women.<\/p>\n
No celebrity survives fame without acquiring a layer or two of tarnish. In the decades between Volumes 1 and 2, Leibovitz\u2019s representations of Black women painted Leibovitz with hers. A 2022 Guardian story<\/a> was headlined, \u201cAnnie Leibovitz proves yet again: she can\u2019t photograph Black women.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLeibovitz\u2019s photographs are what happens when Blackness is seen through a white gaze incapable of capturing its true beauty,\u201d contributor Tayo Bero wrote, referring to a list of Leibovitz subjects including Simone Biles, Viola Davis, Serena Williams and Rihanna. Bero wrote, \u201cIn all cases, she manages to make her subjects look dull, ashy, pained and sad, a far cry from the lively and graceful people that they usually are.\u201d<\/p>\n Bero and others particularly criticized an image Leibovitz made for Vogue, depicting Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson at the Lincoln Memorial. In the photo, the snow-white marble statue takes center stage, overlooking Brown Jackson on the lower left. At the Wiltern, when that image appears, Leibovitz speaks of her own experience shooting it, not the controversy surrounding its publication. \u201cI was skeptical about that idea,\u201d Leibovitz says. \u201cBut she walked into the rotunda and she started reading Lincoln\u2019s words that are engraved into the wall. It was such a moving moment.\u201d<\/p>\n