Wonderland

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Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer whose style is marked by a close collaboration between the photographer and the subject.

Though you’d think it wasn’t so, this is the photographer’s first-ever collection of fashion images; she wanted to save them all for something special, as she states in the book. A compendium of her greatest hits ... Her pictures are big, colorful, beautifully composed, egregiously luxuriant, loaded with detail, and nearly always contain some kind of implied narrative. "– The New York Times Book Review Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children in a Jewish family. Her mother was a modern dance instructor, while her father was a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force. The family moved frequently with her father's duty assignments, and she took her first pictures when he was stationed in the Philippines. Leibovitz is not simply among our foremost image-makers. She has essentially created a new form of portraiture for our time."– Sherri Geldin, director of the Wexner Center for the ArtsOne of the things about fashion is that models know what they’re doing and they like being photographed,” she says. “That was such a new thing for me. I felt like the dentist before that, you know, everyone hated me. To enter this world where people liked being photographed and would play along, I couldn’t believe it. It felt like I was cheating or something.”

Leibovitz started her career as a photojournalist at Rolling Stone in 1971, when the magazine was in its infancy. She was just 21 when her portrait of John Lennon made the cover. Her photographs helped shape the magazine and give it the unvarnished visual gumption it has become known for. In her 12 years at the magazine, she went on tour with the Rolling Stones, shot the final image of the Nixon presidency as the disgraced politician boarded a helicopter from the White House, and captured the iconic, much-copied image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono.Glamour is worth documenting, she believes. Her subjects—whether they be politicians (such as Hillary Clinton), pop-stars (like Lady Gaga), or activists (including Malala Yousafzai)—are captured in an unnervingly realistic way. At the same time, they radiate under the dramatic light she casts over them, enhanced by a glow reminiscent of the chiaroscuro technique used by Renaissance painters. Legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz’s surprising account of her encounters with fashion over five decades. This luxury edition is presented in a beautiful and elegant slipcase.

I just love photography. I love how big it is and how broad it is, the way you can tell stories. I learnt very early on, at art school, that working with magazines in that world was going to be tough. But creating art to a deadline, doing something that matters, within the limits of a publication, is something that drives me.” Includes 350 extraordinary images (many of them previously unpublished) featuring a wide and diverse range of subjects: Nicole Kidman, Serena Williams, Pina Bausch, RuPaul, Cate Blanchett, Lady Gaga, Matthew Barney, Kate Moss, Natalia Vodianova, Rihanna, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Karl Lagerfeld, Nancy Pelosi. With a foreword by Anna Wintour. Specifications: The person who has been the engine for keeping the work going for almost 30 years is Anna Wintour,” Leibovitz said. “She has reassured me, guided me, and sent me off to meet subjects who I admired and really wanted to work with and subjects who I never heard of and who turned out to be amazing people. She is benevolent, tireless, sometimes inscrutable, and almost always, in the end, right—or close enough. She is the wizard of Wonderland.”In 2007 Ms Leibovitz became the first American to officially photograph Queen Elizabeth II and her family. Research is integral to this kind of assignment, she says. “I cannot afford to go into the shoot without a plan.” She views her subjects as creative partners and the final images as a reflection of that relationship. But they will always be a kind of fiction, she admits, despite the immediacy and realism of photography. It will never be possible to capture “the full complexity of a subject” in a single shot. “You can only get ten percent of a person in an image.” ■