Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz is an extraordinary photographer and the documentary created by her sister, Barbara Leibovitz, portrays all of the fascinating aspects that have made her the talented individual she is now. She entered the San Francisco Art Institute with the intent of becoming an art teacher, but after attending a photography workshop something clicked inside of her, and she knew that photography would ultimately be her passion. She began as a photographer for Rolling Stone magazine when it was still in its beginning stages and that is where she gained her initial fame by photographing people big in the music business. She became close with big names such as Hunter S. Thompson and the Rolling Stones, which led to personal issues such as drug abuse.

Leibovitz's portrait of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, 1980

However, she ultimately overcame those personal impediments and upon Rolling Stone's move to New York she began to create different and more skillful photography works. She started doing more glamorous work with magazines such as Vanity Fair and Vogue. She is often criticized by the art community for her commercial works, but the talent demonstrated in her photographs are undeniable. Commercial or not, it still takes an immense amount of skill to create the photos that she does.

The documentary also does a superb job showing the intimate and complex friendship that she shared with the intellectual writer Susan Sontag. They did not always see eye to eye, but they complete one another in the sense that Annie Leibovitz was mainly a visual person and Susan Sontag was mainly a literary person. It was heartbreaking to hear Annie's story about Susan passing away, but that was a huge part of her life that needed to be shared in order to understand her humanity. All in all, she has an incredible personal story, and I hold a great deal of respect for how far she has come doing the work that she loves.