girl meets hollywood: Annie Hall (1977)

Christene Hurley

ARH 1101-3
Final Art Project

Annie Leibovitz, Self Portrait, California, 1990

Christene Hurley, Self Portrait, Winston Salem, 2012

Annie Leibovitz is interested in various forms of art. She
attended the San Francisco Art Institute where she studied
painting and developed her photography skills while working
various jobs. She first worked for Rolling Stones when it was a small magazine about Rock & Roll. As a military brat, she traveled from base to base. Leibovitz bought her first camera in 1967 in Japan. A Minolta SR-T 101. First thing she did was climb up Mt. Fuji and took photos. She considered the hike up the mountain a religious experience and took her first experience on the road with a camera on the road, or path as a lesson in determination and moderation. The following summer she took a photography workshop. Photography was a faster medium than painting. Henri Cartier-Bresson & Robbert Frank were her heroes.

Annie Leibovitz, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, and Fred Hughes, Montauk, New York, 1975

Christene Hurley, Kazuya Kida and Blake Engel, Winston Salem, North Carolina, 2012

In 1969 Leibovitz went to Israel and studied Hebrew during the height of the Vietnam war. Her boyfriend persuaded her to take photos from Israel and antiwar rallies in San Francisco to Rolling Stone. One of her pictures of a demonstration at City Hall was used for the cover of a special issue of the magazine devoted to campus riots and protests. Annie was offered a job to go on tour with the Rolling Stones per Mick.

Annie Leibovitz, Andree Putnam, New York City, 1989

Christene Hurley, Austin Elliott, Winston Salem, North Carolina, 2012

One of the most iconic photos I’ve ever seen is Leibovitz’s photos of John Lennon and Yoko Ono on December 8, 1980. Take a look at the date, it’s the day John died. Annie photographed John nude in the fetal position kissing Yoko on their floor on the morning he was shot.

Annie only shot in black and white until Rolling Stone started printing four-color covers in 1973. One of the first cover pictures she took was a backlit photograph of Marvin Gaye. She has a few portraits with celebrities that I can look at for long periods of time. Whoopi Goldberg in a bath of milk; Steve Martin in front of his Franz Kline painting.

Annie’s collaboration with Arnold Schwarzenegger is worth mentioning because it’s a long time relationship. They first met in 1975 in South Africa during the Mr. Olympia contest.

“Dance can’t be photographed. Or even filmed, for that matter. It is an art that lives in the air.” Leibovitz feels this way about athletes as well. That they are very proud of their bodies and are comfortable in front of the camera.

Annie Leibovitz, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Malibu, California, 1988

Christene Hurley, Bryan Sloyer, Winston Salem, North Carolina, 2012

One of her earliest 35mm prints were taken in ’68 when she visited her family in the Philippines, in the middle of the Vietnam War. Soldiers wounded in Vietnam were sent to Clark Air base to be treated before they were shipped home. She didn’t officially photograph a military operation until ’82 when she visited Israel. Her photos from Sarajevo are almost palpable. The Blood on a mission-school wall, Rwanda, 1994, feels like a scene from Scarface. Annie needed to go back to her roots, no assistants and to work simply. Vanity Fair gave her the excuse to go by agreeing to publish her work.