{"id":141301,"date":"2025-11-15T13:48:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T13:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/141301\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T13:48:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T13:48:11","slug":"i-used-to-be-more-ruthless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/141301\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I used to be more ruthless\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Annie Leibovitz is not only the western world\u2019s most celebrated living portrait photographer, she is also the only person I have interviewed who tries to postpone our chat as soon as it starts. Appearing on Zoom, her shoulder-length silver hair stylishly unkempt, wearing no-nonsense rectangular glasses, a black padded gilet and grey sweater \u2014 precisely the kind of outfit a person would wear if they might need to roll on the floor to take a photograph at any moment \u2014 she apologises and asks if we could speak at the weekend. \u201cI\u2019ve taken on too much this year,\u201d she says in her husky east coast accent. \u201cI was completely out of my mind yesterday, and now I\u2019m even more out of my mind.\u201d But we have postponed twice and my deadline looms. I plead with her to stay; she acquiesces.<\/p>\n

Leibovitz is in Spain when we talk, installing a large retrospective at the MOP Centre in Galicia, part of the foundation established by Marta Ortega P\u00e9rez, the chairwoman of Inditex, which owns Zara. Wonderland focuses on Leibovitz\u2019s maximalist fashion work \u2014 like the 2005 Wizard of Oz-themed Vogue shoot with Keira Knightley as Dorothy and Jeff Koons as a flying monkey. A notorious perfectionist, Leibovitz has decided to exhaust herself by adding an immersive section of earlier work. \u201cIt seemed like, oh, this is a simple idea. But of course I couldn\u2019t help myself and made it more complicated!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Annie<\/p>\n

Annie Leibovitz, Brooklyn, New York, 2017<\/p>\n

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ<\/p>\n

At the same time she is rereleasing Women, her landmark 1999 photography book, with a new companion volume featuring portraits taken over the past 30 years. The original featured female teachers and coalminers, along with cultural icons including Toni Morrison, Louise Bourgeois and Elizabeth Taylor. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe but when we did the first volume it was the first time there\u2019d been a collection of images of [working] women. It was pretty powerful,\u201d she says. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know what we looked like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The original idea came from Susan Sontag, Leibovitz\u2019s partner for more than a decade, who died in 2004. At first, Leibovitz recalls, \u201cI wasn\u2019t enthusiastic \u2014 I thought it was too big a subject.\u201d But the mid-1990s felt like a time of feminist awakening: Hillary Clinton had just declared that \u201cwomen\u2019s rights are human rights\u201d in her speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Leibovitz\u2019s images of Las Vegas showgirls in and out of costume, which ran in The New Yorker in 1996, were \u201ctransformative for me, in so many ways\u201d. Eventually, \u201cI turned to Susan, and I said, I think there is something to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Inside the A-list world of Annie Leibovitz<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Rihanna<\/p>\n

Rihanna, musician, entrepreneur, Ritz Hotel, Paris, 2022<\/p>\n

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ<\/p>\n

\"Chimamanda<\/p>\n

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, writer, Columbia, Maryland, 2024<\/p>\n

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ<\/p>\n

Leibovitz worked on the original Women for about four years. Sontag \u2014 ill with cancer \u2014 wrote the introduction. \u201cShe wrote it while she was on chemo. Rereading it now, it\u2019s incredible she did that.\u201d Sontag argued that men already had enough stories told about them; women needed to catch up. \u201cIt\u2019s still true,\u201d says Leibovitz, who got the book out again a few years ago, when Clinton\u2019s production company contacted her, seeking ways to mark the 30th anniversary of the Beijing conference. It still \u201ckind of held together\u201d, she says, but she wanted to expand its scope. She took images from her archive \u2014 a line-up most photographers would envy, including Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey, Joan Didion and Queen Elizabeth II \u2014 but \u201cthought it was very flat\u201d. And so life got complicated again, as Leibovitz arranged about a dozen new shoots. Of those, she says, \u201cthe big surprise was Michelle Obama\u201d. Leibovitz had photographed her several times, usually wearing a shift dress at the White House. This time Obama\u2019s team asked if she could wear jeans. On set, with Obama\u2019s long braids flying, Leibovitz felt she was witnessing her \u201ctaking off the layers of all those years, being first lady, and coming back to herself\u201d. Her assistant looked at Leibovitz and said: \u201cThat\u2019s my first lady.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Photographer Annie Leibovitz is on a mission to see how we really live<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a new portrait of Clinton too, taken at her paper-stacked desk within her home office in Chappaqua, a room Clinton had resisted being photographed in before. \u201cIt\u2019s very common. People don\u2019t want you to see their messes. But it\u2019s the mess that shows that you work.\u201d The book reflects a difficult time for American women, which shaped her edits. She chose a \u201cvery noble\u201d picture of Clinton at first. Then, \u201cas our times get more difficult, I went back and found something a little bit more pensive\u201d. That said, she points out that an opening essay to the volume, written by her friend Gloria Steinem, strikes a cautiously optimistic tone by taking the long view and telling her own story: \u201cListen, we haven\u2019t really gone backwards. If you want to go backwards, go to the Fifties, when [Steinem] was growing up. You weren\u2019t even recognised in the room, you weren\u2019t even a person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001036345946\"<\/p>\n

Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, August 1991<\/p>\n

Representation of female bodies has changed for the better too, Leibovitz says. One of the book\u2019s most memorable images is a 2022 shot of a reclining, pregnant Rihanna. (Leibovitz likens shooting her to being \u201cdragged behind a car! She is so smart. An incredible woman.\u201d) Rihanna was \u201cvery much in charge of what she was wearing\u201d in the shoot, Leibovitz says, something she loves about female sitters now. She shot the star for Vogue about a decade before. \u201cI remember the fashion editor calling me up the night before, saying, \u2018Rihanna doesn\u2019t fit anything. She doesn\u2019t fit anything!\u2019 Because we were looking for, like, the size two. And I said, \u2018You\u2019re wrong. You don\u2019t have something that fits her.\u2019 So we went back and she ended up wearing a Chanel dress backwards. It\u2019s ridiculous! Things have really progressed in that respect. You know, women come in all sizes and shapes \u2014 exciting news!\u201d she says, laughing.<\/p>\n

Her own work helped push that understanding, most famously with the 1991 Vanity Fair cover of a nude, pregnant Demi Moore, which became a cultural turning point. At the time \u201cpregnancy was something you had to work around\u201d, she says, gesturing across her shoulders \u2014 where photos of gestating celebrities were cropped. When the shoot was \u201cbasically finished\u201d, Leibovitz suggested they try a few pictures that actually showed Moore\u2019s pregnancy. \u201cI went back to New York, and I have to credit Susan Sontag, because she called [the editor] Tina Brown and said, \u2018You got to do this.\u2019 I know that it\u2019s not really talked about that much. It was Susan.\u201d Leibovitz says she didn\u2019t realise \u201cthe power of it until after it was published\u201d. Sontag, though, \u201cwas so intelligent and intuitive \u2014 and she wasn\u2019t always going to be able to explain to me exactly why she knew that it was important\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more photography reviews and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

Much has been written about Leibovitz and Sontag\u2019s relationship, though it was not officially acknowledged in the press until after Sontag\u2019s death. Leibovitz says Sontag shaped her thinking. \u201cBeing with Susan gave me access to how she thought \u2014 good and bad,\u201d she says with a smile. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t afraid of anything, she was fearless. I learnt a lot from her.\u201d<\/p>\n

You get the impression Leibovitz would not use the same adjective about herself. In a 2006 documentary Steinem described the 6ft photographer as \u201cthe tallest and most authoritative unsure person that I\u2019ve ever seen\u201d. But her body of work is courageous.<\/p>\n

\"Zendaya<\/p>\n

Zendaya, shot in 2024 \u2014 an image from the Wonderland retrospective<\/p>\n

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ<\/p>\n

\"Louise<\/p>\n

Louise Bourgeois, sculptor, New York City, 1997<\/p>\n

ANNIE LEIBOVITZ<\/p>\n

One of six children, Leibovitz was born in Connecticut but moved frequently and took her first photos when her father was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. She had already secured a job at Rolling Stone magazine while she was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, in part on the strength of photos she took of Allen Ginsberg at a San Francisco peace march. During that time she famously embedded herself on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1975, and took the last portrait of John Lennon hours before he died in 1980. \u201cI grew up, basically, at Rolling Stone,\u201d she says. \u201cI never put my camera down.\u201d When she was younger, she says, \u201cI was probably more ruthless about just wanting the photograph, and that was it. And then you grow up a little bit, can\u2019t just want the photograph, you have to be a human being, slightly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leibovitz became a mother at 52, having her first child, Sarah, in 2001, followed by the twins Susan and Samuelle. \u201cYou know, I\u2019m one of six kids,\u201d she says. \u201cI just was determined to have children. I let a lot of time pass before I suddenly realised, if I didn\u2019t do that, I knew I would regret it.\u201d Having kids \u201cwas not a mistake. You know, it is true, everything that everyone says about it.\u201d Her kids are a big part of her downtime, which she spends at her upstate home. Together they watch The Gilded Age and The Great British Bake Off, during which Sarah makes wild creations inspired by the show. \u201cThey\u2019re all figuring their lives out, which is kind of fun to watch. But they\u2019re not interested in photography \u2014 and they\u2019re particularly not interested in me taking their picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the future, portraiture, not fashion, is where she feels she belongs. \u201cI mean, doing portraits and doing stories. I think that Anna Wintour came from a journalistic family. She really loved the idea of using me for Vogue. And I had a really beautiful ride, but the years that I have left, I\u2019d like to concentrate on stories and portraits.\u201d She is working on an archive show and a four-volume set of books for release in 2028, covering \u201cmy work, the way I see it\u201d \u2014 which has sometimes been different from the perception, she says, as she has sought to \u201cwork in the commercial landscape of magazines but still think of myself as an artist within it. It\u2019s not for the light-hearted. It\u2019s up and down \u2026 but in the long run I think it will hopefully balance out,\u201d she says, laughing. <\/p>\n

Annie Leibovitz Wonderland is at the MOP Foundation, A Coru\u00f1a, Spain, from Saturday to May 1<\/p>\n

Annie Leibovitz: Women (Phaidon \u00a379.95), with essays by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Susan Sontag and Gloria Steinem, is out now, phaidon.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Annie Leibovitz is not only the western world\u2019s most celebrated living portrait photographer, she is also the only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-141301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}