The exhibition of the Vanity Fair Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery will no doubt include images from superstar photographer, Annie Leibovitz. If you don’t know the name, you will know the photographs: Demi Moore pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair, Queen Elizabeth II, Angelina Jolie exposing her tattoos in a bathtub, and of course John Lennon nakedly entwined around a clothed Yoko Ono (taken the day of his assassination, 8 December 1980).

Born in 1946 in Connecticut, Leibovitz enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute to study painting before becoming interested in photography. She worked for Rolling Stone from 1970 and later joined Vanity Fair in 1983. Her portraits have also been published in Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and in ad campaigns for American Express, The Gap and the Milk Board. Often dreamlike and glossy, her images capture distinctive poses of modern icons in settings of bright colours and elaborate lighting in order to reveal the personalities of her subjects. This aspect of her photography was exemplified when she was commissioned for the Disney Dream Portrait Series, placing celebrities within Disney inspired scenes, including Whoopi Goldberg as the genie from Aladdin.

When Leibovitz published her book, A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, we were exposed to images of her own life. It included her celebrity portraits as well as those of her parents, children, other family members, her partner Susan Sontag, and herself.

Leibovitz met Sontag in 1989 when she photographed the writer for her book, AIDS and its Metaphors. Their relationship continued until Sontag’s death in 2004. Sontag’s influence on Leibovitz was profound, and without her encouragement Leibovitz may have never visited Sarajevo. Providing the imagery for Sontag’s critical works, Leibovitz extended her vision to journalistic photography. They collaborated on works about the war afflicted area and later on Women (1999).

The pair had a significant intellectual relationship but their romantic relationship was not always transparent, although Leibovitz was more open about their love following Sontag’s death with the release of A Photographer’s Life.

A Photographer’s Life displays images in contrast to each other and is sometimes criticised for its merging of public and private collections. Leibovitz explains in the introduction to her book, “I don’t have two lives. This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.” And so, the blurring of the professional and personal identities of Leibovitz have manifested as a series of revealing images. Some of the most personal photographs show Sontag during treatment for cancer and her final months. There was controversy over showing these images but Sontag had wanted her life and memories to be photographed.

Leibovitz continues to be in high demand and her portraits appear frequently in Vanity Fair. The Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition is on display at the National Portrait Gallery from 5 June to 30 August.

By Carmen Sarjeant for FUSE Magazine

Vist the National Portrait Gallery online www.portrait.gov.au