Annie Leibovitz
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on October 2, 1949, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father’s parents had emigrated from Romania. Her mother, Marilyn Edith, née Heit, was a modern dance instructor of Estonian Jewish heritage; her father, Samuel Leibovitz, was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. The family moved frequently with her father’s duty assignments, and she took her first pictures when he was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War.
At Northwood High School, she became interested in various artistic endeavors, and began to write and play music. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied painting. For several years, she continued to develop her photography skills while working various jobs, including a stint on a kibbutz in Amir, Israel, for several months in 1969.
When Leibovitz returned to the United States in 1970, she started her career as staff photographer, working for the just launched Rolling Stone magazine. In 1973, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz chief photographer of Rolling Stone, a job she would hold for 10 years. Leibovitz worked for the magazine until 1983, and her intimate photographs of celebrities helped define the Rolling Stone look. While working for Rolling Stone, Leibovitz became more aware of the other magazines. Richard Avedon’s portraits were an important and powerful example in her life. She learned that she could work for magazines and still create personal work, which for her was the most important. She sought intimate moments with her subjects, who “open their hearts and souls and lives to you”. She was awarded The Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS) in recognition of a sustained, significant contribution to the art of photography in 2009. Photographers such as Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson influenced her during her time at the San Francisco Art Institute. “Their style of personal reportage – taken in a graphic way – was what we were taught to emulate.”
The Rolling Stones
Leibovitz photographed The Rolling Stones in San Francisco in 1971 and 1972, and served as the concert-tour photographer for Rolling Stones Tour of the Americas ’75. Her favorite photo from the tour was a photo of Mick Jagger in an elevator.
Annie Leibovitz inspired me for one of my projects I was given on location. Her work inspired me to focus on bands as she had taken a series of photograph for ‘The Rolling Stones’.
This photograph has been taken by Annie Leibovitz. It is a photograph of Mick Jagger in an elevator so this hasn’t been taken in a studio, but she still uses the lighting in the elevator to compliment Mick Jagger. The lighting is almost like horror lighting as below his eyes there is starting to become a shadow, and also below his chin. The lighting that has been used is the lighting in the elevator above his head, I think the lighting used is harsh, hard lighting but it brings out the features on his face. This is high key lighting because there is no real shadow and his face has been lit up a lot by the lighting, but the way Leibovitz has taken this photograph she hasn’t lost a lot of detail in his face. The background isn’t very busy it is very plain and simple, making him the main focus in this photograph, but also the bright lighting above him could take focus of him.
Laurentyler. 