Product Description

The celebrated photographer Annie Leibovitz, author of the New York Times bestselling book A Photographer's Life, provides the stories, and technical description, of how some of her most famous images came to be. Starting in 1974, with her coverage of Nixon's resignation, and culminating with her controversial portraits of Queen Elizabeth II early in 2007, Leibovitz explains what professional photographers do and how they do it. The photographer in this instance is the most highly paid and prolific person in the business. Approximately 90 images are discussed in detail -- the circumstances under which they were taken, with specific technical information (what camera, what settings, what lighting, where the images appeared). The Rolling Stones' tour in 1975, the famous nude session with John Lennon and Yoko Ono hours before Lennon was killed, the American Express and Gap campaigns, Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub of milk, Demi Moore pregnant and naked on the cover of Vanity Fair, and coverage of the couture collections in Paris with Puff Daddy and Kate Moss are among the subjects of this original and informative work.The photos and stories are arranged chronologically, moving from film to digital. Leibovitz's fans and lovers of great photography will find her stories of how one learns to see -- and then how to photograph -- inspiring.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3169 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review
`undoubtedly one of the world's best photographer's. Annie Leibovitz at Work, is a must have collection'.
--Aesthetica

Review
"Prepare to be inspired."

About the Author
Annie Leibovitz's witty, powerful portraits have appeared on magazine covers for more than twenty- five years. Her astute observations of American popular culture appeared first in her legendary work for Rolling Stone in the 1970s and have continued through her long affiliation with Vanity Fair and Vogue. Leibovitz has worked with several artistic organizations, including American Ballet Theatre and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and with Mikhail Baryshnikov's dance projects. Women, a book of Leibovitz's portraits, with an essay by Susan Sontag, was published in 1999. Her 2006 book, A Photographer's Life, was a New York Times bestseller. Leibovitz is the recipient of many honours, including both first and second place in the American Society of Magazine Editors' recent compilation of the 40 top magazine covers of the past 40 years. Leibovitz was designated a Living Legend by the Library of Congress in 2000 and an Officier in the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2002. Smithsonian Magazine named her one of the 35 Innovators of Our Time in November 2005.

Customer Reviews

Biographical Notes, Technical Insights, and Inspiration . . . Portrayed on a Too Small Page

Any fan of Annie Leibovitz will want to read and cherish this book. The words and images will mean the most to young people dreaming of having a career in photography who wonder about how she got started.

Annie Leibovitz's photography has surrounded and informed us for so long that it has become part of the landscape, perspectives that we employ and too often take for granted. In Annie Leibovitz at Work, she takes us behind the camera a little to understand her motivations, her family, her career, her assignments, her purposes, and how those iconic images were constructed. I enjoyed the book very much but I found that it had two flaws that bothered me: She is a usually little too coy in holding back details that her disclosures make enticing. The page sizes are too small to properly display the images. The print quality is excellent, but you can only do so much when images intended for full magazine pages or portraits are displayed in 3 inch by 5 inch formats. A minor weakness is that some of the images she talks about aren't portrayed (presumably either a space or a permissions problem, but it is disappointing whenever it happens).

Here are some of the poignant stories in the book:

1. Taking the last portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono before John was murdered.

2. Photographing the Rolling Stones on tour while trying to keep a nervous independence from the parties and the crush of fans at the end of a concert.

3. John Cleese nearly suffocating to get the picture of pretending to be a bat hanging from a tree.

4. Capturing Al Sharpton at the beauty parlor.

5. Arnold Schwarzenegger changing his image through her photographs.

6. The story behind the pregnant cover of Demi Moore.

7. Cindy Sherman wanting to disappear in her portrait.

8. Capturing the war in Sarajevo.

9. The slaughter in Rwanda.

10. Posing OJ during his LA trial.

11. The arrogant photograph of the new White House team in town (December 2001).

12. Philip Johnson and his glass house.

13. Agnes Martin

14. Queen Elizabeth

Of the technical details, I was most interested in her descriptions of how she put together multiple shots to appear as one image.

Here are some of the many iconic images in the book:

Richard Nixon leaving the White House, Washington, D.C., 1974
Hunter S. Thompson and George McGovern, San Francisco, 1972
Tom Wolfe, Florida, 1972
Apollo 17, the last moon shot, Cape Kennedy, Florida, 1972
The Rolling Stones, Philadelphia, 1975

Keith Richards, Toronto, 1977
Mick Jagger, Chicago, 1975
Mick Jagger, Buffalo, New York, 1975
John Lennon, New York City, 1970
John Lennon and Yoko Ono, New York City, December 8, 1980

Tess Gallagher, Syracuse, New York, 1980
Robert Penn Warren, Fairfield, Connecticut, 1980
Bette Midler, New York City, 1979
Meryl Streep, New York City, 1981
The Blues Brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi), Hollywood, 1979

Steve Martin, Beverly Hills, 1981
Whoopi Goldberg, Berkeley, California 1984
Keith Haring, New York City, 1986
John Cleese, London, 1980
Andrée Putnam, New York City, 1989

William Wegman and Fay Ray, New York City, 1988
Evander Holyfield, New York City, 1992
Willie Shoemaker and Wilt Chamberlain, Malibu, California, 1987
The Reverend Al Sharpton, PrimaDonna Beauty Care Center, Brooklyn, New York, 1988
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Malibu, California, 1988

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sun Valley, Idaho, 1997
Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rob Besserer, Cumberland Island, Georgia, 1990
Mark Morris, Cumberland Island, Georgia, 1990
Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, Paducah, Kentucky, 1988
Demi Moore, Culver City, California 1991

Cindy Sherman, New York City, 1992
Carl Lewis, Pearland, Texas, 1996
Sarajevo, 1993
Soccer Field, Sarajevo, 1993
Blood on a mission-school wall, Rwanda, 1994

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, Los Angeles, 1995
Patti Smith, New Orleans, 1978
Patti Smith, New York City, 1996
Puff Daddy and Kate Moss, Paris, 1999
Ben Stiller, Paris, 2001

Natalia Vodianova, Stephen Jones, and Christian Lacrois, Paris, 2003
Keira Knightley and Jeff Koons, Goshen, New York, 2005
Kirsten Dunst, Versailles, 2006
Cabinet Room, The White House, Washington, D.C. December 2001
Nicole Kidman, Charleston, East Sussex, England, 1997

Johnny Depp, New York City, 1994
Cate Blanchett, Los Angeles, 2004
Philip Johnson, Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut, 2000
William S. Burroughs, Lawrence, Kansas, 1995
Agnes Martin, Taos, New Mexico, 1999

Marilyn Leibovitz, Clifton Point, New York, 1997
Sarah Cameron Leibovitz, New York City, 2002
Susan Sontag, Paris, 2003
Sharon Stone, Angelica Huston, and Diane Lane, Los Angeles, 2006
Kirsten Dunst, Bruce Willis, and James McAvoy, Los Angeles, 2006

Judi Dench and Helen Mirren, Los Angeles, 2006
Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet, New York City, 2006
Jack Nicholson, Los Angeles, 2006
Elizabeth II, Buckingham Palace, London, 2007 (4)
Hillary Clinton, New York City, 2003

Take a close look and enjoy!

Great book- intresting facts
Really intresting and inspiring information on her recent and not so recent work.

Definatly worth buying if you like her work- i bought it as im a photography student. Its useful to know how great photographers of today started out and what they have achieved.

Not a large variety of pictures in this book, it is more written therefore if you want bright and bold pictures buy her other book which is also really invaluble and inspiring

The book we've all waited for....
...I am a photographer and what I love about this book is the way Annie L answers all of the questions one might put to her if the opportunity ever arose.
She is obviously very familiar with a huge swathe of works of other photographers and she makes no secret of her search for inspiration from photographers she admires when she approaches her subjects. This book reminds us to look at great works and remember how young photography is as a medium, that ground was still being broken as recently as the 90's.
It is not the definitive picture book - but it is beautifully printed and the reproductions are small but top, top quality. It should be a companion to her two picture books - not a replacement.
Her searing honesty - "my work is 90% moving furniture" - and her total acceptance that a photograph can only be a moment in a life of a person and not capable of 'capturing' that person is consoling to those of us who have been working in portraiture, often with the impossible brief to 'define' someone with one image.
Her biggest gift to young photographers is her attitude to equipment and in the very early part of the book she talks about having to learn to live with her camera - "...there aren't going to be any pictures without it." Cameras are just tools of the trade and she's not a brand slave - it's just about the right tool for the job, that's so refreshing.
I couldn't put this book down once I picked it up.