Annie Leibovitz began her career as a photojournalist for Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 while she was still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1983, she joined the staff of Vanity Fair magazine, where, over three decades, she has developed a large body of work—images of actors, directors, writers, musicians, athletes, and political and business figures—offering a collective portrait of contemporary life. Today, her photographs of celebrated figures assume gestures and poses that expose a private side of their personalities.
Leibovitz is the recipient of many honors, including the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award, The American Society of Magazine Editors’ first Creative Excellence Award and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in London. Several collections of Leibovitz’s work have been published and exhibitions of her work have been held at museums and galleries worldwide, including at the National Portrait Gallery and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; the International Center of Photography in New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris; the National Portrait Gallery in London; the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
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), a first-person commentary on her career; and Pilgrimage (2011).
