Photography: Anna-Lou “Annie” Leibovitz, My New Mentor
Well, let’s get something straight, I don’t mean I’m being personally mentored by Annie Leibovitz, what I do want to convey though is that I’ve been learning a lot from reading her book ‘Annie Leibovitz At Work’. And truly, this lady works hard!
What I admire about her writing is the way she shares her surprises when things don’t turn out as expected. For example her early colour work for Rolling Stone Magazine was made using a technique to give high saturation to her transparencies. This was because the newsprint used at the time by Rolling Stone absorbed some of the colour. When her transparencies were published in Japan for a book, suddenly they looked garish.
This is the kind of experience we all have as photographers, yet imagine never happens to ‘masters’ such as Leibovitz. Discovering more about the human side of a famous expert somehow demystifies the subject.
I had hoped this past month to write more about ‘Duffy’ as an inspiration, and that’s why I kept his film on this page for so long. He is an inspiration, but I must come back to him in later posts. At the moment I owe a debt of gratitude to Leibovitz for ‘In Response To Place’ the film she made about why she photographed the Shawangunk Mountains.
She helped me to create the right focus for my forthcoming exhibition, with Michael Eldridge: ‘Trees and Sky‘.
Image from ‘Trees and Sky’, by Michael John Eldridge
