Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz 1949-, American photographer, b. Waterbury, Conn., as Anna-Lou Leibovitz. A celebrated portrait photographer, she began contributing photographs to Rolling Stone in 1970, was named its chief photographer three years later, and became known for her images of rock personalities, notably a 1975 Rolling Stones concert tour series and a 1980 double portrait of a nude John Lennon clinging to a clothed Yoko Ono. Leibovitz moved away from reportage and on to a wider range of celebrity subjects when she became a principal photographer for Vanity Fair magazine in 1983. In the mid-1980s she also began photographing for major corporate advertisers. Her arresting, generally posed, and technically accomplished images of the famous and the unknown, in deeply saturated color or modulated black and white, represent a broad survey of American popular culture. Her books include 1983 and 1991 collections, Olympic Portraits (1996), Women (1999), American Music (2003), and A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005 (2006).