Thursday, November 20, 2008
Annie Leibovitz at Portland Arts & Lectures 11.20.08
Annie Leibovitz's presentation at Portland Arts and Lectures was by that of an author as well as a photographer. Her new book is Leibovitz at Work She said it began as something she was going to slip in as a requirement to her Random House contract. What began as a short book that she thought she could use for teaching someday that would profile the background of a few photographs became a 240 page book that featured well over a hundred. But mostly it is a project where she feels, with the aid of the editor she worked on with for her massive retrospective A Photographer's Life, she found her voice as a writer.
So she read to the audience sitting in a red arm chair stage right as her life's work was displayed on the screen of the Schnitz. She would occasionally embellish her text with some extemporaneous comments, but for the most part she read her solidly crafted prose. Topic organization structured temporally gave her the opportunity to cover a lot of ground and the audience to experience the breadth of her work as a photographer. Leibowitz at Work came out this week and I sense it is something she is quite proud of. She talks how they literally had to pull the manuscript away from her this past July 30 to meet publication date.
The thing that impressed her about photography as an arts student in San Francisco was that the experience was different every time. It also gave her an alternative to other art studies, which at that time she says was populated by lots of angry abstract expressionists, a space she didn't share.
Our whirlwind tour through Leibovitz At Work had stops on her early experiences of working with Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe, which was quite a study in contrasts. Thompson didn't really want a photographer around. Wolfe helped her gain access. Wolfe never sweated. Thompson was constantly in drug sweats and thought he was dying when he wasn't. When Nixon resigned, Thompson stayed in his hotel and never filed his story. Leibovitz's photographs are probably the most important record of the event and she received an eight page photo essay in The Rolling Stone.
Her 1972 Rolling Stone tour story was most interesting to me not for stories of hanging with the Stones, but of the young woman in her early twenties standing in awe of legend Robert Frank who was filming his notorious documentary at the time. He told Leibowitz "You can't get every picture." But she adds, "somehow, he did."
She spent some time discussing the conceptual portraits she is most noted for. The most interesting of these encounter anecdotes was the series of portraits she did of Queen Elizabeth. She talked about the challenges the shoot provided her because of the queen's late arrival and how she gaffed by calling her tierra a crown. But somehow two professionals connected and got the job done.
One of the most intriguing elements of her discussion for me regarded her remarks about the medium of digital photography. Leibovitz feels that with digital you are not working with black and white or color. She loves the portability and freeing nature of it, especially when working with low light conditions is concerned. Her Vanity Fair Hollywood portfolio work illustrated how she can move through time and space with digital, including two subjects shot in different locations and different days. But most of all you get a sense by looking at these images and hearing her speak, she is impressed by the ability of digital to defy and create a new reality.
As I looked at these recent fantastic images of hers, I recalled that this was the building I saw Mary Poppins in forty five years earlier. I don't think I ever really liked it, but one can't deny that it is about life's possibilities and giving them a go. Leibovitz is no Mary Poppins or Julie Andrews, for that matter. But her message to young photographers is not necessarily in a completely different time zone. "A Picture is more than about the content. It is important that you care about it."
On our way across the street to the Gus Solomon Court House for the post PAL lecture reception, Pam mentioned how she was pleased that this would be the last time we would have George and Dick glaring at us as we enjoyed our wine and evening snack. This lady may have shared the same sentiment. Maybe this image shares some kind of spirtual link to the Leibowitz image of soldiers rolling the carpet as Nixon's helicopter departed.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:29 PM
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