Annie Leibovitz – A Photographer’s Life Indeed

Annie Leibovitz at the opening of her exhibition ‘Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005’

Annie Leibovitz – A Photographer’s Life Indeed

Annie Leibovitz. A confident, poised, charismatic woman. The black jacket she wore looked as comfortable as her sneakers. Her welcoming speech was also a soothing breeze at the opening of her retrospective exhibition Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005 at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore.

Annie knows people, media, crowds and how to lead them. Not surprising though, she’s worked with the toughest nuts and egos in the business as a prized gun for hire in the high fashion and editorial world over the decades. I, on the other hand, felt a little out of place. As Wong Maye-e, AP photographer and the only friend I knew present said “The crowd is all trendy, fashiony and magaziny types.” The observation is probably an accurate barometer of Annie’s current popularity and following. Fans of her work today would more likely tweet and share her latest Vogue cover portrait of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West than her early, raw documentary work as a staff photographer at Rolling Stones magazine when it first launched.

Leibovitz’s retrospective exhibition threads together two sides of her work – her intimate, personal images of her private life, a significant portion of which is an album of her relationship with Susan Sontag, one of the most influential and quoted critics of photography, against the glitzy glamour of her commercial portrait photography.

Annie Leibovitz discusses her portraits of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis.

A family album at Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005.

Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005.

Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005.

Annie takes a picture at the opening of her exhibition.

“It’s a tension that I continue to deal with. The art and the commerce. The reportage, the set-up.” Annie says. “I started photography in the school of Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson and their reportage approach.” Responding to a question, Annie recounts the various phases in photography – reportage, then art, conceptual then back again, and now “With digital photography nowadays, it feels more like conceptual artists working with photography.”

Walking through the large, gracious exhibition space and Annie’s 200 odd photographs, one can’t help but feel awed by her breadth and body of work. Annie has had quite a remarkable career.

Naturally, I gravitated towards her personal photographs. Much of these were pinned along two long partition walls chronologically from 1990s to 2000s. On one of the walls, a quote of Annie’s read “I don’t take a lot of purely personal pictures. Susan Sontag… used to complain that I didn’t take enough pictures. She would say that every other photographer she knew took pictures all the time.”

I found Annie’s untitled photograph of the body of Susan Sontag at her funeral in 2004 the most poignant piece in the entire exhibition.

Today everything exists to end in a photograph, Susan once said.

Photograph of Susan Sontag at her funeral | Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005.

Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005 is exclusively presented in Singapore through ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands, from 18 April till 19 October 2014.

Making its debut in Singapore at ArtScience Museum on 18 April 2014, Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005 is a retrospective showcase of the works of one of the world’s most celebrated and widely recognised photographers, Annie Leibovitz. Bringing together close to 200 iconic photographs, the exhibition chronologically threads together two sides of Leibovitz’s work, providing a unified narrative of her private life against the backdrop of her public image. Through her lens, Leibovitz has captured eras, pivotal events and the ascents of well-known figures for decades.