Wonderland

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Glamour is worth documenting, she believes. Her subjects—whether they be politicians (such as Hillary Clinton), pop-stars (like Lady Gaga), or activists (including Malala Yousafzai)—are captured in an unnervingly realistic way. At the same time, they radiate under the dramatic light she casts over them, enhanced by a glow reminiscent of the chiaroscuro technique used by Renaissance painters.

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer whose style is marked by a close collaboration between the photographer and the subject. Even after more than 50 years, and photoshoots with presidents, first ladies, the Dalai Lama and the Queen, Leibovitz admits to being nervous every time she takes aim. “Oh sure! Of course,” she says. “I’m always nervous.” But, she adds, “Isn’t that the fun of it? You admire and respect people, and when you work with them, that is daunting.” Includes 350 extraordinary images (many of them previously unpublished) featuring a wide and diverse range of subjects: Nicole Kidman, Serena Williams, Pina Bausch, RuPaul, Cate Blanchett, Lady Gaga, Matthew Barney, Kate Moss, Natalia Vodianova, Rihanna, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Karl Lagerfeld, Nancy Pelosi. With a foreword by Anna Wintour. Specifications:Legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz's surprising account of her encounters with fashion over five decades Legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz’s surprising account of her encounters with fashion over five decades Now when we think of the little girl who grows, shrinks, and navigates all manner of odd encounters, we tend to imagine her in a blue dress with an Alice band. Much like Dorothy’s gingham and ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz (1939) or Little Red Riding Hood’s, well, red hood, it’s an immediately identifiable outfit. However, the first authorised colour version of the book featured her in yellow. Both she (behind the camera) and the subjects in front of it are, she thinks, engaged in an act of performance. Her work is imbued with theatrics. She snapped Angelina Jolie on the front of a hang glider, and Keira Knightley as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz”. Ms Leibovitz’s mother was a dance teacher, and always signed her up for classes. “It changed how I look at things around the camera,” she says. There is a rhythm to her process, a one-two of intrusion and retreat.

Annie Leibovitz: Wonderland” is published by Phaidon. Photographic prints from the book will be on display at Hauser & Wirth in Southampton, New York, until December 23rd, 2021. Whether she's photographing the famous and powerful - or simply the woman next door - Annie always captures something unexpected and deeply personal."– Oprah Winfrey Leibovitz is the recipient of many honors. In 2006, she was made a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She has received the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the first Creative Excellence Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the Centenary Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in London, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Award to Distinguished Women in the Arts, the Wexner Prize, and the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. She has been designated a Living Legend by the United States Library of Congress. She lives in New York with her three children, Sarah, Susan and Samuelle.

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When Leibovitz returned to America in 1970, she worked for the recently launched Rolling Stone magazine. In 1973, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz chief photographer of Rolling Stone. Leibovitz worked for the magazine until 1983, and her intimate photographs of celebrities helped define the Rolling Stone look. Over the last 50 years, Annie Leibovitz’ eye has helped direct, guide and capture the fashion industry’s greatest talents; her hallmarks – theatrical staging, enchanting storytelling and a surrealist bent – working in creative dialogue with the designs they portray. In the spirit of collaboration, Leibovitz spoke to the group (just after Vanity Fair’s Radhika Jones and Phaidon CEO Keith Fox delivered heartwarming words of appreciation for the photographer) about the gratitude she felt toward Wintour. It is curious, then, that Leibovitz does not consider herself a fashion photographer. In fact, the 72-year-old says that for many years, she “didn’t take fashion seriously at all”. Annie Leibovitz. Wonderland’ is on view now through 23 December 2021 at Hauser & Wirth Southampton.

Grace is very tough,” laughs Leibovitz. “Every time I would work with her, it’s like starting from scratch. Grace likes to remind me that I don’t do a lot on set.” Eventually, she concedes, “I found my way with it. But I never would have thought I’d end up in fashion.” Anna Wintour, Vogue editor-in-chief since 1988, wrote the foreword, saying that “nothing is unphotographable for Annie; no request is too outlandish, too bizarre, too hard.” Her work is often funny, too. “My approach to fashion has always been lighthearted,” she says. She revels in its inherent whimsy. Take for example, her shoot featuring Sarah Jessica Parker, the star of “Sex and the City”, in front a mountainous pile of pillows. Or her series depicting Natalia Vodianova, a Russian model, crammed into a tiny house as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in her wonderland.Legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz’s surprising account of her encounters with fashion over five decades. This luxury edition is presented in a beautiful and elegant slipcase. Several collections of Leibovitz’s work have been published. They include, ‘Annie Leibovitz: Photographs,’ (1983); ‘Annie Leibovitz: Photographs 1970–1990,’ (1991); ‘Olympic Portraits (1996); Women,’ (1999), in collaboration with Susan Sontag; ‘American Music,’ (2003); ‘A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005,’ (2006); ‘Annie Leibovitz at Work,’ (2008; revised edition 2018), a first-person commentary on her career; and ‘Pilgrimage,’ (2011); ‘Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016,’ (2017); ‘Annie Leibovitz: The Early Years, 1970-1983,’ (2018); ‘Annie Leibovitz: Wonderland,’ (2021). What makes a great photograph is hard to define, she says, and sometimes it takes years for her to be able to look at a photograph and assess it objectively. “The photos, and my perception of them, do change over time,” she says. “You need distance from the images. Sometimes photographs take on different meanings, or become more or less relevant over time.” Now, these images at the cornerstone of Leibovitz’ career are brought together in a new book by Phaidon (on sale now at Matchesfashion’s Carlos Place store and online). Titled Wonderland, the book invites us, like Alice, to go down the rabbit hole, suspending reality for a much more interesting adventure. The person who has been the engine for keeping the work going for almost 30 years is Anna Wintour,” Leibovitz said. “She has reassured me, guided me, and sent me off to meet subjects who I admired and really wanted to work with and subjects who I never heard of and who turned out to be amazing people. She is benevolent, tireless, sometimes inscrutable, and almost always, in the end, right—or close enough. She is the wizard of Wonderland.”

In 1975, Leibovitz served as a concert-tour photographer for The Rolling Stones' Tour of the Americas. Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children in a Jewish family. Her mother was a modern dance instructor, while her father was a lieutenant colonel in the United States 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.One of the things about fashion is that models know what they’re doing and they like being photographed,” she says. “That was such a new thing for me. I felt like the dentist before that, you know, everyone hated me. To enter this world where people liked being photographed and would play along, I couldn’t believe it. It felt like I was cheating or something.” Leibovitz is not simply among our foremost image-makers. She has essentially created a new form of portraiture for our time."– Sherri Geldin, director of the Wexner Center for the Arts Leibovitz’s new book, Wonderland, would suggest otherwise. A smaller, slimmer volume than her other works (“I really did want something you could rest on your lap,” she says wryly), it is a celebration of her fashion photography Much of the 72-year-old artist’s output blurs the line between photojournalism, which strives to document a fleeting moment to preserve reality, and editorial photography, which depicts its subjects in a stylised way to promote products, tell a story or attract attention. As a student, Ms Leibovitz found the friction between documentary photography and fashion shoots compelling. “The former was kept higher up while the other was considered commercial.” A] gorgeous anthology of fashion images … Leibovitz is nothing less than America’s greatest living photographic portraitist … she has changed fashion photography forever.” – Anna Wintour