Annie Leibovitz at Work

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She received the American Society of Magazine Photographers award for photographer of the year in 1983. She began to work as an advertising photographer in 1986, gaining such clients as Honda, American Express (the “Portraits” campaign), and the Gap (“Individual of Style” campaign). The American Express ad campaign that used her photos won a Clio Award, recognizing advertising excellence worldwide, in 1987. She later was involved in the California Milk Processor Board (the “Got Milk?” campaign) and shot a series of ads featuring celebrities as Disney characters for Disney theme parks. In 2011 she photographed seven top female athletes for the sportswear company Nike’s “Make Yourself” campaign. Her style throughout these projects was characterized by carefully staged settings, superb lighting, and her trademark use of vivid colour.

Arnold was sharing a room with his friend Franco Columbu, who came in second in the final posedown. Arnold and Franco were very competitive and brotherly and I decided that I wanted to photograph them in bed. I had in mind something that was, in retrospect, along the lines of Bruce Weber. The magazine used one of the photographs of them horsing around. Standing on their heads on their pillows. It was more silly than erotic. They had their underpants on for that shot, but Arnold was also walking around naked that morning. Like most models or athletes who love their bodies, Arnold didn’t mind being naked. During the summer after her freshman year, Annie joined her parents at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where her father was stationed. Her mother had the opportunity to visit Japan and took Annie with her.CNN, "Lawsuit against Annie Leibovitz dropped", CNN, 11 September 2009". Cnn.com. September 11, 2009 . Retrieved January 26, 2011. Working on assignment for Rolling Stone with the legendary journalist Hunter S. Thompson, Leibovitz captured the moment when, after resigning as president, Nixon left the White House for the last time. Three stooped guards in the foreground of the image roll up the carpet, fighting against the wind from the whirling blades as Nixon's helicopter hovers behind them. The magazine intended to publish the image alongside Thompson's piece but when he failed to submit, the editor published Leibovitz's images alone. The expressive photos captured an extraordinary, and highly-documented event in American history in a novel way. Here Leibovitz brilliantly highlights that the relevance of a work of art is not in what it reveals about the subject, but in what it shows about the cultural moment in which it was created. Leibovitz is also the mother of three children. At the age of 51, she had her daughter, Sarah. In 2005, twin daughters Susan and Samuelle were born with the help of a surrogate mother. Leibovitz photographed celebrities for an international advertising campaign for American Express charge cards, which won a Clio award in 1987. [19]

Leibovitz has a distinctive ability to capture the essence of a moment, to perceive details otherwise neglected that communicate an alternative vision of a scene, event, or person. The family splits their time between New York (where Massenet now runs the Imaginary Ventures fund she co-founded in 2018, which does early-stage investing in businesses such as Skims, Westman Atelier and Mejuri), East Hampton and an 18th-century manor house in Wiltshire, England. (Bella is a DJ studying at NYU’s Gallatin School; Ava an aspiring singer-songwriter in high school at Spence.) Leibovitz's celebrity group portraits have helped make her as famous as her subject matter, and her distinctive staged groupings immediately recognizable. Her success lies in her ability to create visual interest in her placement of people, lighting, and props, which is made to seem effortless, but in practice requires much thought and planning. Leibovitz embraces this superficiality of celebrity culture stating that, "some times I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter." The relevance of the work of art often is not about what is reveals or exposes about the subject, but what it reaveals about the cultural moment in which it was created. Taken together Leibovitz's celebrity covers sketch a trajectory of contemporary popular culture. Torstensson, for his part, could not be happier. “My proudest achievement, apart from my son,” he says, “is the relationship I have with Bella and Ava. I’ve been part of their lives for 11 years and, while I’ve never tried to be their father – they have a fantastic father – I’m proud of what we have.”

Christiana Tien Tran & Katrin Wesolowski

Our version of family included the two of us as friends and then later as a couple, but also a network of people we love dearly. We call it both a logical and biological family,” says Legler. “As for kids, neither of us wanted children until we started dating and could imagine raising a kid together for the first time in our lives. That realisation was one of the manifestations of our love.” View our Annie Leibovitz playlist on YouTube for the Leibovitz behind the scenes videos. Annie Leibovitz Photos