Tomorrow a groundbreaking exhibition, Annie Leibovitz at Work, opens at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Composed of new and rarely seen recent photographs integrated with many images made during Leibovitz’s legendary career (including several taken for Vogue and Vanity Fair), Annie Leibovitz at Work is a personal view of a body of work that includes a number of important public figures: artists, actors, musicians, politicians, athletes, architects, and business leaders.
The show grew out of an invitation by Alice Walton, the force behind Crystal Bridges, to create something for the museum. In Leibovitz’s words:
“They didn’t ask what I wanted to photograph or where I wanted to go. I realized that I wanted to update my work. It was an opportunity to do something that I couldn’t do for anyone else. The strength of my work is seeing the pictures together, like brothers and sisters. That’s what makes it interesting. It’s full of history.”
The images in the show are seen in prints on paper and on digital display screens and will remain up through January 29, 2024.
On the day of this photo shoot with the Artemis II crew at Johnson Space Center, Leibovitz and her team asked the astronauts what music they wanted to listen to. The unanimous answer was Taylor Swift.
More than one mile long, City is the largest contemporary artwork ever built, located in Garden Valley, a desert valley off the grid in rural Nevada. Heizer began working on City in 1972, and now more than 50 years later, the work is considered finished.
In 2023, Elon was proving difficult to pin down for a portrait—but once his mother, Maye, was included, the sitting was scheduled for the next day.
Smith is a poet, professor, poet laureate, and Pulitzer Prize winner. Her 2011 collection of poetry, Life on Mars, pays homage to her late father, an engineer who worked on the Hubble Space Telescope.
Buchdahl has served as the senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City since 2014 and is the first woman in Central’s 180-year history to lead its Reform congregation. The location of this portrait is a very special place for the rabbi—it is where she comes to reflect and write her sermons.
In 2014, Rushdie was photographed with his group of supporters, and then in 2023, nine months after he was attacked at a lecture in New York, Leibovitz took his portrait again in New York.
Browne, founder and head of design for New York–based Thom Browne, is married to Andrew Bolton, the head curator of the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Leibovitz believed the only place to photograph Twohey and Kantor was their New York Times offices—the place where they wrote about Harvey Weinstein and the allegations against him of decades of sexual abuse. Their work won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for public service.
It was Leigh’s idea to be placed in her sculpture Las Meninas for her first sitting in her Brooklyn studio. The close-up of her hands kneading clay came on a second visit. Leigh was the first Black woman to be selected to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale, in 2022.
Abrams is an American politician, lawyer, voting-rights activist, and author who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017. Depicted are members of Abrams’s family, including Reverend Robert Abrams, Reverend Carolyn Abrams, Faith Abrams, Dr. Andrea Abrams, Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, Jimmie Gardner, Richard Abrams, Nakia Abrams, Jordan Abrams, Rylan Abrams, Ayren Abrams, Dr. Jeanine Abrams McLean, Brandon McLean, Cameron McLean, and Devin McLean. Walter Abrams (not pictured) is a student.