Leibovitz paints picture about her career with celebrities




Annie Leibovitz Courtesy photo

Annie Leibovitz Courtesy photo

Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz wowed the crowd at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza on Nov. 6 with tales of life on the edge in the early 1970s when she worked as a lead photographer at Rolling Stone, one of the leading counterculture magazines of its time.

Leibovitz, a guest of the Distinguished Speaker Series, shared insights into the photographs found in two of her books, “At Work” and “A Photographer’s Life.”

When asked how to break into the celebrity photography biz, she said, “Stay close to home, friends and family. You should take pictures of something that means something to you.”

During her time at Rolling Stone, Leibovitz said, photography became her life. Everything seemed interesting to her, people, events, cars, you name it, and she shot it.

“Photography took me outside and helped socialize me,” she said.

Hunter S. Thompson, founder of the gonzo journalism movement in the 1970s, a style of journalism that puts the journalist in the story, pushed Leibovitz to branch out from her brand of highly stylized portraiture and try a more freewheeling approach.

Following his advice, Leibovitz took hundreds of photos as she traveled Highway 5 from San Francisco to Los Angeles. She showed samples of her work, including shots of the many traffic cops who issued her speeding tickets.

Leibovitz captured a different take on President Richard Nixon’s departure from the White House in 1972. The photos of guards rolling up the red carpet after Nixon entered the presidential helicopter for the last time told the shamed president’s story in a new light, she said.

Thompson, who planned to write about that moment for Rolling Stone, ended up missing the deadline to file the story. Leibovitz said eight pages had been reserved for the piece so, to fill the space, her photos were blown up and featured in an eight-page spread at a time when only a handful of pictures, at best, would have accompanied a story.

Three years later, Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, called. He asked Leibovitz to be the lead photographer on the band’s tour. Featuring band members in all kinds of natural situations, Leibovitz quipped that they were like a “group of lost boys” and she had “very few pictures of Keith Richards standing.”

Leibovitz also talked about loss. Her partner of 15 years, essayist Susan Sontag, died in late 2004, followed closely by the death of the photographer’s father.

Leibovitz read from her book “A Photographer’s Life, 1990- 2005,” which showcases photos of people she loved. Many feature women from everyday life, including her mother.

One portrait of her mother, not smiling, Leibovitz said was a tough one to take because her mother didn’t want to look old. But over time she came to appreciate the photo and gave her daughter the satisfaction of knowing she approved of it. The portrait became one of Leibovitz’s favorites because, she said, it was as if there wasn’t a camera between them.

Another photo of her parents made Leibovitz laugh. They were so used to their daughter constantly taking pictures that they didn’t move when she snapped an image of her father reading the newspaper in the kitchen while her mother washed dishes in her bathing suit. Leibovitz said her father died “a beautiful death” in her mother’s arms. She showed a photo of his grave.

The photographs of Sontag were haunting. Leibovitz showed images of her during cancer treatment, at the hospital and earlier photos of Sontag and friends dressed up as bears. Pictures of Leibovitz and Sontag’s three children were also shown.

Leibovitz shared many celebrity photos as well, and she was known to go out on a limb with them: Demi Moore naked and pregnant, naked John Lennon embracing Yoko Ono dressed in black, Whoopi Goldberg in a bath full of suds.

The photographer touched on some of her favorite subjects. Maurice Sendak, author of “Where the Wild Things Are” and many other picture books, “talked about dying all day long,” she said. She showed a portrait of Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and a shot of tennis superstars Serena and Venus Williams hugging each other that she loved so much Leibovitz has it hanging on her fridge.

In her talk, Leibovitz seemed to be the same kind of gal she was when she started out as a photographer in her early 20s— hippyish, funny and still shooting photos that can make the cover of Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Vogue or Esquire.