EXHIBITION: ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
“I don’t have two lives,” Leibovitz says in reference to her latest project to arrive in Australia, A Photographer’s Life 1990–2005. The exhibition and accompanying book reflect this; celebrity, landscape, and political images mingle with the incredibly personal – the artist’s parents, children and particularly her partner of 15 years, Susan Sontag.
Sontag’s presence permeates the exhibition, the years covered (1990–2005) almost exactly those Leibovitz spent with her as friend, lover, and collaborator. The images exhibited were selected by Leibovitz as she as she mourned both the loss of her partner in Sontag, and the loss of her father in late 2004. “I cried for a month. I didn’t realize until later how far the book had taken me through the grieving process. It’s the closest thing to who I am that I’ve ever done.” The book, from which the exhibition sprang, was published in 2006, and A Photographer’s Life has been touring since – through the US, Paris, London, Madrid and Vienna before arriving in Sydney this month.
The works exhibited are hung chronologically, giving rare insight into the personal life and artistic influences of this prolific and important photographer. Her admiration for reportage style photographs is strongly felt through the political and personal shots, offering an evocative contrast to the meticulously staged celebrity portraits from her years at Vanity Fair (the last three of which are included in this exhibition). The images featured in the exhibit are wonderfully eclectic – from the iconic to the unseen. The infamous shot of a naked and heavily pregnant Demi Moore hangs opposite images of Sontag’s shell collection; images of Sontag in hospital contrast monumental landscapes; a bloodied massacre site in Rwanda hangs with portraits of models, artists, dancers, actors.
What is particularly striking in the images are their edges, the things Leibovitz allows to creep into the frame. The stark figure of a dancer leaping against a white background is stunning, but it is the strange industrial backing and hint of darkening sky framing the screen that brings the complexity and fragility to the work. One of my personal favourites is a photograph of Sontag in Petra, Jordan. She faces away from the camera, a tiny figure dwarfed by a mammoth cave opening, outside which we can see an ancient building facade. It’s a complex and pensive shot, both inside and outside, natural and man-made, populated and yet oddly empty. There is a rawness and an unguardedness in many of Leibovitz’s images, and certainly to the exhibition as a whole. They deal in the dissolution of borders, the unsettling of limits, occupying a liminal space from which emerges a sense of unity unique to the artist.
A Photographer’s Life is a rich and layered insight into the life and work of one of our era’s most interesting photographers. Known throughout the world for her often infamous portraiture, A Photographer’s Life gives us the whole story; Leibovitz the artist, political commentator, daughter, mother, lover, and carer. Each image is telling in its own way, through its composition, framing, subject’s gaze – all the Leibovitz watermarks that have earned her formidable reputation. Here it is the personal element that is especially striking, revealing a depth to her work that will come as no surprise to those familiar with the commissioned pieces. The famous faces littering the walls become almost commonplace as the warm, casual and often heart rending personal images weave their spell.
Until Mar 27, Museum of Contemporary Art, 140 George St, The Rocks, $10-15, 9245 2400, mca.com.au
