LO1 - Report on Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz was an American Photographer born October 2^nd, 1949, her father was in the military and her mother was a dancer. She was well known for “dramatic, quirky, and iconic portraits of a great variety of celebrities”. She initially was set on becoming a painter however that changed after she “quickly became engrossed” in becoming a photographer after taking a night class in photography. She was fond and popular for taking photos of celebrities, her first job being to take shots of John Lennon for a Rolling Stones magazine. She would often spend days observing her subjects in their daily lives and worked to make the portraits “unique and witty “each being a “technically exquisite distillation”

This image is of Kendrick Lamar, in this there is a projection of a photo used on the cover of a Vanity Fair magazine, this is used to be projected over him standing casually against a wall, this shot therefor is clearly staged and shot in a very simple style. From looking at other photos on vanity fair, a lot of the shots aren’t staged and even though Leibovitz is mostly known for portraits, these shots fall more into the documentary genre. This one doesn’t show him like they would model a big rapper such as Eminem as he doesn’t have any tattoos and he isn’t posing to make him seem bigger or better than anyone, this is done deliberately as this relates to how Leibovitz studies people before taking her shots.

 

 This shot is of Lamar in his dressing room, this image is of a whole scene as his dressing room is quite modest and not what would be commonly associated with such a big singer. This shot will have been shot with a portrait lens and would have had a higher aperture to remove glare form the lights. This shot is simple yet has a lot of meaning by including the bag and the laptop as it gives another interpretation to the audience.  It shows that the artist doesn’t fit in with stereotypes attached to rap artists as he doesn’t appear particularly tough or masculine, it more giving a sense of comfort and makes him seem to not want to be “flashy” with his fame.

 

 

 

Here in this image, this shot is taken from the back of the stage, it draws the attention to the audience and the lights, for this shot Leibovitz may have raised the ISO as to make these lights seem brighter and lower the shutter speed in order to allow the shot to make up for motion in the scene as the crowd would be moving a lot and so would Kendrick. This scene is great as it is from behind Kendrick and almost gives an insight into his perspective, and how the focus isn’t on him and it is more drawn towards his audience, this could hint to him wanting to perform to entertain audiences instead of focusing on himself and fame.

 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Annie-Leibovitz

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/06/kendrick-lamar-cover-story