Justifiably the most celebrated photographer of her time, Annie Leibovitz has been dubbed ‘our generations Gainsborough’ by English Vogue.
Strolling around the recently commissioned Photographer’s Life exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, one can clearly see the influence Leibovitz’s work has had in creating the artifice of celebrity.
Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Kate Moss eye each other with cement like gaze. A crystal clear image of Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore appears to inhale and exhale from its frame – here Hollywood’s finest act like baying paparazzi, peering through wooden windows, all silently screaming “look at me”. The establishment are alive and well, living shoulder to shoulder in the National Portrait.
Many drawn to the exhibition will overlook the intimacy of Leibovitz’s personal portraits due to a modern preoccupation with the life of celebrity, but these portraits are perhaps the most crucial ingredient of Photographer’s Life. The cacophony of celebrity images seems overshadowed and humbled by the subtle portraits of Leibovitz’s own family life.
A macabre undercurrent runs like a river through the exhibition - Leibovitz’s personal life has been torn to shreds by the passing of her mother and father, not to mention her life’s love, Susan Sontag.
Whether this is clever positioning by curators or merely a timely colliding of indecencies is debatable. Regardless, Leibovitz’s portraiture shows us the fragility of her subjects and ultimately her own fallibility in this body of work.
Great portraiture has always been about preserving the life’s blood of its subject, rendering them i
Strolling around the recently commissioned Photographer’s Life exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, one can clearly see the influence Leibovitz’s work has had in creating the artifice of celebrity.
Demi Moore, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Kate Moss eye each other with cement like gaze. A crystal clear image of Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore appears to inhale and exhale from its frame – here Hollywood’s finest act like baying paparazzi, peering through wooden windows, all silently screaming “look at me”. The establishment are alive and well, living shoulder to shoulder in the National Portrait.
Many drawn to the exhibition will overlook the intimacy of Leibovitz’s personal portraits due to a modern preoccupation with the life of celebrity, but these portraits are perhaps the most crucial ingredient of Photographer’s Life. The cacophony of celebrity images seems overshadowed and humbled by the subtle portraits of Leibovitz’s own family life.
A macabre undercurrent runs like a river through the exhibition - Leibovitz’s personal life has been torn to shreds by the passing of her mother and father, not to mention her life’s love, Susan Sontag.
Whether this is clever positioning by curators or merely a timely colliding of indecencies is debatable. Regardless, Leibovitz’s portraiture shows us the fragility of her subjects and ultimately her own fallibility in this body of work.
Great portraiture has always been about preserving the life’s blood of its subject, rendering them i
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