Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer. She was born October 2, 1949 in Waterbury Connecticut. She started taking pictures in the Philippines when her father, who was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force, was stationed there during the Vietnam War. After graduating high school she attended the San Francisco Art Institute. She started working for Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 and was named chief photographer in 1973. In 1975, she worked for them as a concert-tour photographer. On December 8, 1980 she had a photo shoot with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Sadly, five hours later he was shot and killed. In 1983, she started working at Vanity Fair as a featured portrait photographer. One of her famous covers from Vanity Fair was of a naked and pregnant Demi Moore.
There was an exhibit of her work, including professional photographs of celebrities and personal ones of her family, at the Brooklyn Museum between October, 2006 and January, 2007. It was based on her book, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005. She was hired by Disney in 2007 to shoot a series of photographs with celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and Beyonce for their “Year of a Million Dreams” campaign. In 2008, she took controversial pictures of 15-year-old Disney star Miley Cyrus in which she appears to be topless.
Other famous photographs of hers include pictures of Linda Ronstadt, Brooke Shields, Whoopi Goldberg, Christo, David Cassidy, Dolly Parton with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, Queen Elizabeth, Sting, Pete Townshend, Patti Smith, Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen, and Gisele Bundchen and LeBron James.