Annie Leibovitz

She photograph's everything from royalty to pop and rock. she has no fear of the controversial like the John Lennon image. Leibovitz's life is her subject, her kids are very important and they are also a main subject. Coming from a large family taking photos and videos was natural and most of her childhood was in the car. Which already puts the world in a frame. She has been set up from childhood to put things in frames.

Her first images were taken in the Philippines, in a war zone/riot like community. Her ambition was to be a teacher but realised that she had to be an artist before she would be qualified to teach the subject.

Cartier-Bresson was her first influence, which is clear by the documentary style of her early images.

Rolling Stones magazine was her first photography job and she discovered that a magazine gives her a canvas to fill and a chance to travel. She begged her boss to let her photograph john Lennon's first in depth interview. Rolling Stone bosses decided to give her space and she flew with it and did all work for the photography. She would travel with specific people for up to a week taking photograph's of there life making all there images intimate. to help with this she would adapt so that she could talk to anyone and be part of the 'gang'. Leibovitz joined the Rolling Stones on tour and became part of the team. she became intrusive and everyone trusted her especially behind the stage and the bands personal life's and habits.

This is the last image ever taken of John Lennon and was very controversial because this image shows that he was still vulnerable even with his fame and his unconditional love that he had for his wife. He could give up everything he has as long as he had her. I love this image because it is so passionate and honest with his feelings. The Rolling Stone magazine is targeted at music lovers for indie, pop and rock genres which Lennon fits into. His death and fame of this magazine is a recipe for controversy and huge sales of the magazine that they may have never experienced before.

She would always call her ideas stupid and simple even though everyone else would call them fantastic and clever. Up until this point she was massively on drugs, this massively influenced her work conduct. Vanity Fair magazine put her in rehab and took her in. This is the start of her set up scenes and extreme use of natural and flash light. Vogue also employ her which gave her the budget she needed to create the masterpieces of fairytale stories. However she also takes images of famous people to humanise them. She shows the insecurities and their personalities.

This image is very bright and uses lots of models including famous faces like Keira Knightley. It is very effective because a lot of the references to the movie are accurate, the yellow bricks, Cairn Terrier, people in the background to make them look small and the good witch in a large, very bright gown. I think this image is especially great because of the number of models to control and complexity of the layout including the floor, dresses and thorough lighting through out the whole image. This image is obviously part of a magazine article shown by the text in the upper left corner. This might be to promote movies that the actors are in or maybe a celebration of the Wizard of Oz.

A large amount of her work uses natural light to create shadow and tone therefore I am going to attempt to create one with natural light intruding into confined spaces.