The "Annie Is One Of My Favorites" Story

Annie Leibowvitz by Frederick Brown.

It was an ordinary day.  Reading an online story from "The Seattle Times" which was written by Tyrone Beason.  Story titled "Portrait Of A Decade" which was a story about legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz.  I taught high school photography for over three decades and during those years I have been able to share the life's stories of many famous photographers with my students.  Louis Daguerre, Edward Muybridge, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, Annie Leibovitz, Ansel Adams, Carolyn Jones and Jerry Driendl are a few that my classes had a chance to study during the year-long course.  Now, if you don't recognize all of the names, perhaps you never had me as a teacher.  And, if you don't recognize the last two, it's because they were students of mine that have made a career, and a rather successful career, from being a professional photographer.  Neither one of them learned more than the basic skills and history from me, but nonetheless, I still think I had some influence in them choosing the career path that they did.  Well, the story written about Annie Leibovitz was very interesting and I learned more about her than I had already known.  Annie was born in 1949 in Waterbury, Connecticut.  She studied painting at San Francisco Art Institute during the day and studied photography during the evening.  

Cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.

In 1970 she began doing photographs for Rolling Stone Magazine.  Three years later she became their chief photographer and ended creating some of the most iconic photos of my lifetime.  By the time she left the magazine she had shot over 142 covers.  She joined the staff at Vanity Fair in 1983 and then the staff at Vogue in 1998.  Her photographs reveal her witty, painterly and often mythic images.  It was on December 8, 1980 that she was at The Dakota apartment building in New York trying to persuade ex-Beatle John Lennon and his musician wife, Yoko Ono, to pose nude together for a Rolling Stone story.  Lennon was willing, but Ono declined.  While he was naked he crawled next to his fully clothed wife while they were both on the floor, wrapped his arms and legs around her and gave her a kiss.  Leibovitz happened to capture the moment with her Polaroid camera.  Five hours later Lennon was dead, shot outside the building by an angry fan.  The Polaroid photograph is considered Rolling Stone's greatest cover photo.  She has won so many awards that there isn't enough space here to list them.  In 1991 she was asked to display 200 of her works at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington Gallery in Washington, D.C. being the first woman ever to be so honored.  To this day she still is in great demand for photo assignments.  Annie at one time had a close relationship with writer and essayist Susan Sontag until Susan's death in 2004.  Leibovitz has three daughters.  Her first one was born October 2001 when she was 52 years old.  She also has twin girls who were born to a surrogate mother in May of 2005.  Despite being raised in a Jewish home, she no longer practices Judaism, but does say, "I'm not a practicing Jew, but I feel very Jewish."  There has been so many new and exciting events in Annie's life since I stopped teaching almost 20 years ago, so my wish is that my former students have followed her progress and can say they studied in high school how she began her career years ago.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  PS - Some of my favorites follow.  I do prefer the black and white photos, but still enjoy a few of her color images.

Bruce Springsteen

David Bowie

Elton John

Muhammad Ali