Wonderland

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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

In 2007 Ms Leibovitz became the first American to officially photograph Queen Elizabeth II and her family. Research is integral to this kind of assignment, she says. “I cannot afford to go into the shoot without a plan.” She views her subjects as creative partners and the final images as a reflection of that relationship. But they will always be a kind of fiction, she admits, despite the immediacy and realism of photography. It will never be possible to capture “the full complexity of a subject” in a single shot. “You can only get ten percent of a person in an image.” ■ 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. 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. 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.” 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.” This new title explores that side of her practice for the first time, by reproducing more than 350 photographs, featuring a wide array of subjects, including Cate Blanchett, Serena Williams and Nicole Kidman; as well as the Queen of England and a good few First Ladies (not to mention Nancy Pelosi).

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: 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. 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. 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. 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.”

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In the late 1970s, editor Clay Felker approached her to shoot the model Margaux Hemingway for New West, a Californian spin-off of New York Magazine. It was her first brush with fashion and, says Leibovitz, a revelation. Though you’d think it wasn’t so, this is the photographer’s first-ever collection of fashion images; she wanted to save them all for something special, as she states in the book. 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).