Duffy, along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan, revolutionized fashion photography and helped define the visual style of the Swinging Sixties.

He wasn’t just a remarkable fashion photographer though, he was also known for his innovative advertising work (long before the days of photoshop) and was a master portrait photographer too. He even shot the Pirelli calendar on two separate occasions.

Then at the height of his fame in 1979, Duffy did the unthinkable: he put away his camera and walked away from photography for good.

Below, we’ve put together a list of our favorite 30 Duffy quotes to inspire and help take your photography to the next level.

Brian Duffy Quotes

The thing about the photographs is that there is no smell or sound and in a sense it tells the truth and yet it is a lie.

One of the great problems with photography is that any twat you give a camera to can take a photograph – what that does to the photographer is immediately create an inferiority complex within him because anyone can do it, which of course they can. I worked this out very early on.

I can show anybody how to take a photograph, but I’m not sure how to show somebody how to take a Duffy photograph.

I never used a lot of film – it’s like boxing; perfect boxing is 11 seconds: one second to get to the centre of the ring and 10 seconds to keep your hands up, but they were all done in camera – with absolutely no retouching.

I never wanted to be famous. Artists are always talking drivel, including moi, because the work is the statement.

[On how he’d like to be remembered, Duffy replied:] He wasn’t as steady as a tripod.

Duffy on Getting Started in Photography

I could paint and draw, but in my group were artists like Frank Auerbach, Joe Tilson, Bernard Cohen and Len Deighton – they were all my contemporaries and I realised that all these bloody people were geniuses. So I thought I’d knock that on the head. And the most attractive girls were doing dress design, so I moved to the fashion department, which had some lovely girls in it. You had to do fashion drawing, design dresses and make them, and it turned out I was an absolute bloody genius!

I was doing fashion drawings for Harper’s Bazaar, and I was in the office of the art director, a woman called Gill Varney, and I saw sheets of contact photographs that all looked alike to me. I asked Gill why the photos were all the same, and she explained they were all slightly different.

I thought, ‘Gawd this looks dead easy compared to the drawing lark. I’ll give this a whiz. Take up photography as an easy way to make money. Just my sort of thing – women, gadgets, clothes – I must have a go at it.’

Brian Duffy Quotes on Fashion Photography

When I arrived at Vogue [in the late 1950s] it was virtually full of non-talented people, right the way through from top to bottom. These were people with s – taste; they were all phonies. You have to remember in those days it was very class-ridden. The girls on reception nearly always had double-barrelled names. It was very elitist – Lady Jemima Fawcett-Green, -Blue or -Pink – girls with fruitcake voices and thick legs, quite sweet, but not very bright, girls with pin-sized brains.

In all my time at Vogue I only did four trips. Other people did trips all the time – they wouldn’t let me out of the cage, probably rightly so.

I wanted to make women look good. That really intrigued me. To make a model look as though she owned the clothes.

The Black Trinity

Most of the photographers of that period [the late 1950s] – Parkinson, John French, Dickie Dormer – had a slightly effeminate approach, and that was the way they got through. The way to be a successful photographer was to be tall, thin and camp – you were seen to be inside the tent, and we [Duffy, Terence Donovan, David Bailey] were not. I’m not saying they were all homosexuals but a lot of them were. I can never remember Terry calling someone darling, it might have been ‘Oi, you, missus!’

Before 1960, a fashion photographer was tall, thin and camp. But we three are different: short, fat and heterosexual.

Bailey, Donovan and other photographers just didn’t have that slightly feminised view; we would just talk to the girls and make them laugh. We probably said, ‘Would you mind moving your hair back off your face?’ or, ‘All right love, hold your Bristols up more. That looks good.’ Before that it would all have been obsequious toadyism, but our way seemed to work, and we were backed up by people who liked it.

We were great mates but also great competitors. We were fairly chippy and if you wanted it you could have it. We would not be told what to do.

Duffy on Working for Elle France

I went over to Paris and worked for Elle in 1961, while I was still at Vogue , and I fell in love with them, hatefully of course. The French are the most dreadful people on earth – well, the Parisians – and I must have had some masochistic attraction to them. They were like a drug to me, and I just adored working for them. You never got anything right as far as they were concerned.

As soon as you did something, there was a dreadful, long, intellectual discussion, always a long pause, and a scratching of the head. They were never negative to the point of putting you down – some people look for negativity, but the Frogs always looked for the positive.

If all the photographs were out of focus the Brits would think, ‘Oh God, he doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ whereas the Frogs would think, ‘Mmm, that’s interesting. I wonder if this is an attempt to express visual perception in a different way?’ And then of course they’d say, ‘Well, it could be a broken camera!’ But that’s the difference.

David Bowie’s Album Aladdin Sane

The photograph was a die transfer, which I oversaw and it was all actual, no retouching.

Tony DeFries, his [then] manager, wanted to make the most expensive cover you could possibly get a record company to pay for. He couldn’t have come to be a better con artist than my good self.

Dye transfer is a genius method of being able to spend the most amount of money to get reproduction from a colour transparency on to a piece of paper. And we went to Switzerland, the most expensive place to get a plate made.

Bowie was interested in the Elvis ring which had the letters TCB [taking care of business] as well as the lightning flash. I drew the design on his face. We used lipstick to fill in the red.

To me, it [the cover] was competent, very competent, but I wouldn’t take it much beyond that.

I drew the zigzag onto his face. It was the trademark for National Panasonic – a red and blue zigzag that I took from a rice cooker. It also came from Elvis Presley, who had a ring with a lightning flash on it.

The Final Curtain

Photography was dead by 1972. Everything had been resolved between 1839 and 1972. Every picture after ‘72, I have seen pre-‘72. Nothing new. But it took me some time to detect its death. The first person who twigged was Henri Cartier-Bresson. He just stopped – and started painting and drawing.

Ninety-nine per cent of my work was advertising and crap. The people who were hiring me I didn’t like. Keeping a civil tongue up the rectum of a society that keeps you paid is an art which I was devoid of. I had nothing more to say in photographs. I’d taken all the snaps I needed to take. Maybe I didn’t think I was good enough.

In the end I guess I was the ultimate prostitute. It felt like I was on the game, because I had no respect for the people who were giving me work. If you don’t have any respect for them and you think they’re a bunch of toerags, you’d hardly have any respect for yourself, so it’s cyclical in the way that you think about yourself.

The Last Straw

I came into work, and an assistant said, ‘We haven’t got any lavatory paper, bog paper – you know, toilet paper,’ and I said, ‘Oh yeah,’ and he said, ‘We haven’t got any.’ I thought, ‘I am either going to kill this bloke or I am going to kill somebody.’ I realised in a flash that I’d ended up commander-in-chief, managing director, senior partner in charge of the toilet bloody paper.

Not only was I the senior stockholder, managing director, chairman of the board and top dog, I was now expected to get the toilet paper – the whole thing imploded. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

And that’s when I decided to knock it on the head, and that I would never take another picture. During the course of the morning I decided to burn all my negatives in the garden. Bailey happened to come round and could see what I was doing, and he stood there like a spare d – at an Italian wedding and said, ‘I could look after those for you,’ but I said, ‘Don’t bother,’ and he went.

I felt everything I had to do and say in photography had been done. Later I wished I’d kept some negs. Looking back on odd things we’ve found, I’d love to have known the sequence of prints, only from an historical point of view.

You make decisions in one period that you wouldn’t necessarily make in another. But it’s stimulating to try something new, it’s interesting to be crazy. The one thing I’ve never done is make a wrong decision as a single entity. They’ve all been wrong.

What’s your Favorite Brian Duffy Quote?

Have a favorite Brian Duffy quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To see more of Brian Duffy’s photography, check out his images on the Duffy Archive website. His fashion and portrait work is incredible. We also recommend watching the documentary, Duffy: The Man Who Shot the Sixties (opens in new tab).

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

Related Quote Articles:

• David Bailey Quotes
• Terence Donovan Quotes
• Norman Parkinson Quotes
• The 100 Greatest Photography Quotes

The post 30 Brian Duffy Quotes on Fashion Photography and the Sixties appeared first on Photogpedia.

If you’re looking for some words of wisdom from one of the greatest editorial and portrait photographers of the last fifty years then you’ve come to the right place.

To learn more about Annie Leibovitz’s photography, working process, and her incredible career, then we highly recommend reading our article Annie Leibovitz: Life Behind the Lens

If you enjoy the article then please share with others through social media and your own blog.

On to the quotes…

Annie Leibovitz Quotes On…

Photography Philosophy

In this day and age of things moving so, so fast, we still long for things to stop, and we as a society love the still image.

I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months, I was there, I was told that I couldn’t be an art teacher unless I became an artist first. 

I don’t have a single favorite photograph. What means most to me is the body of my work. The accumulation of photographs over the years. 

When I take a picture, I take 10 percent of what I see.

What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone. 

I’m more interested in being good than being famous. 

You think you know something, and you realize you haven’t really been looking that close yet. 

Photography’s like this baby that needs to be fed all the time. It’s always hungry. It needs to be read to, taken care of. I had to nourish my work with different approaches.

Annie Leibovitz

Style

I no longer believe that there is such a thing as objectivity. Everyone has a point of view. Some people call it style, but what we’re really talking about is the guts of a photograph. When you trust your point of view, that’s when you start taking pictures.

Annie Leibovitz

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t. It’s important to stay the course. I don’t think I would have lasted this long if I’d listened to anyone. You have to listen somewhat and then put that to the side and know that what you do matters. 

Annie Leibovitz

What has stayed true all the way through my work is my composition, I hope, and my sense of color. 

I’ve learned to create a palette, a vocabulary of ways to take pictures. 

As you get older, you have different tools, and you learn to use photography differently. 

I feel more like a creative artist using photography because there’s – the digital work is so interesting now. It’s come to that. I have had many different stages of photography – there are many different ways to take photos. But I feel now I’m in that stage of my life where I use the camera, you know, in that way. 

Ideas for Photos

You don’t have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.

Annie Leibovitz

Somewhere in the raw material was the nucleus of what the picture would become. It could be simple. There’s a case to be made that the simpler the idea the better.

I don’t mind doing something obvious. I’m not looking for the ultimate image, the ultimate essence of someone. The chances of that happening are far and few between. 

I don’t try to over-intellectualize my concepts of people. In fact, the ideas I have, if you talk about them, they seem extremely corny and it’s only in their execution that people can enjoy them…It’s 

something I’ve learned to trust: The stupider it is, the better it looks.

Annie Leibovitz

I read their poetry and I started to think how interesting it would be if I could show what their poems look like, what they were writing about. It was part of the portrait. And it was a significant beginning. I find myself now trying to crawl back to this kind of work. You look back at your work – to learn what you should do to go forward.

Annie Leibovitz Quotes on the Work

The cover is not a photograph. I mean you might as well be doing advertising; it really is designed to sell the magazine.

As fantastic as it is to have ‘Vogue’ and ‘Vanity Fair’ as places to work, I don’t often get to shoot the kind of things I like to photograph in the way I like to photograph. 

I’ve always cared more about taking pictures than about the art market. 

Those who want to be serious photographers, you’re really going to have to edit your work. You’re going to have to understand what you’re doing. You’re going to have to not just shoot, shoot, shoot. To stop and look at your work is the most important thing you can do. 

Annie Leibovitz

It’s like sitting in a room with ghosts. You go through your pictures and you think about what that shoot was like, who that person was, what that meant, that time in your own life. 

When I’m asked about my work, I try to explain that there is no mystery involved. It is work. But things happen all the time that are unexpected, uncontrolled, unexplainable, even magical. The work prepares you for that moment. Suddenly the clouds roll in and the soft light you long for appears.

Photography is not something you retire from. 

As I get older, the book projects are – liberating is one word, but they really are me. 

One of the great things about being an older person is that I am very aware of the scope of the work and the historical sense of it. It’s bigger than me. 

Annie Leibovitz

The Process

When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, the person’s time, turns out to be the most valuable thing. 

When you involve people, they come out, you see them, you get to see their sense of humor. 

I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it’s not working, I change the position. 

Having a studio is a little like having a fancy car; it doesn’t help you take better pictures.

I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn’t just looking back at you. 

Coming tight was boring to me, just the face… it didn’t have enough information. 

I use music when I shoot. In the beginning, it camouflaged my inability to talk to people. But the music on a shoot isn’t just background. It raises the mood, sets the tone. The right music at the right time elevates the situation. Music can make or break a shoot.

Annie Leibovitz

What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not. 

A lot can be told from what happens in between the main moments. 

A very subtle difference can make the picture or not. 

Photography is very limited. It’s an illustration of what’s going on. Basically, you’re never really satisfied.

As I became more experienced, I began to understand that someone who is being photographed can work for only so long and you shouldn’t belabor the situation. Something is either going to happen or it’s not going to happen. What does happen a lot is that as soon as you say it’s over, the subject will feel relieved and suddenly look great. And then you keep on shooting.

Annie Leibovitz Quotes on Portrait Photography

There is a myth that the portrait photographer is supposed to make the subject relax, and that’s the real person. But I’m interested in whatever is going on. And I’m not that comfortable myself.

Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter. 

I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude. 

Related Article: 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

When you go to take someone’s picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward. 

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what’s going on, but it’s representative. 

Annie Leibovitz

I’m pretty used to people not liking having their picture taken. I mean, if you do like to have your picture taken, I worry about you. 

My early childhood equipped me really well for my portrait work: The quick encounter, where you are not going to know the subject for very long. These days I am much more comfortable with the fifteen-minute relationship than I am with a life long relationship. 

Getting to Know your Subjects

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I’d like to know them. 

Annie Leibovitz

A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people. 

Irving Penn said he didn’t want to photograph anyone under 60, and I think there is some truth about it. 

I’ve never liked the word ‘celebrity.’ I like to photograph people who are good at what they do. 

I think self-portraits are very difficult. I’ve always seen mine as straightforward, very stripped down, hair pulled back. No shirt. Whatever light happened to be available. I’d want it to be very graphic – about darkness and light. No one else should be there, but I’m scared to do it by myself. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.

The whole idea of a self-portrait is strange. I’m so strongly linked to how I see through the camera that to get to the other side of it would be difficult. It would be as if I were taking a photograph in the dark. 

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz Quotes on Photojournalism

As much as I’m not a journalist, I use journalism. And when you photograph a relationship, it’s quite wonderful to let something unfold in front of you. 

All dancers are, by and large, a photographer’s dream. They communicate with their bodies and they are trained to be completely responsive to a collaborative situation.

When I started to be published I thought about Margaret Bourke-White and the whole journalistic approach to things. I believed I was supposed to catch life going by me – that I wasn’t to alter it or tamper with it – that I was just to watch what was going on and report it as best I could. This shoot with John [Lennon] was different. I got involved, and I realized that you can’t help but be touched by what goes on in front of you. 

At my Rolling Stones’ tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way. 

Related Article: Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Quotes

I gave up on being a journalist – I thought having a point of view was more important than being objective. 

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that’s what I was doing, but it wasn’t.

I realized I couldn’t be a journalist because I like to take a side, to have an opinion, and a point a view; I liked to step across the imaginary boundary of the objective view that the journalist is supposed to have and be involved. 

Annie Leibovitz

Nature and Landscapes

Nature is so powerful, so strong. It takes you to a place within yourself. 

I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed. 

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself. 

There are still so many places on our planet that remain unexplored. I’d love to one day peel back the mystery and understand them. 

What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.

I went to Yosemite as an homage to Ansel Adams. I could never be Ansel Adams, but to know that’s there for us – there’s so much for us in this country. 

Cameras, Equipment, and Lighting

When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you’re with someone, like you have a companion.

When I was younger I did things with a camera I would not do by myself. I went down to the docks in San Francisco and asked a fisherman if he would take me out on his boat. I would never do that without a camera.

The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.

Annie Leibovitz

If I didn’t have my camera to remind me constantly ‘I am here to do this’ then I would have eventually slipped away I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.

I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.

Very much like everyone else, I’m using what’s out there now and learning how to use it. Like everyone else, I sometimes go too far… There’s a little too much [digital] hanky panky with this stuff and I want to try to bring it back.

By the time you’ve negotiated the tripod, you’ve lost the moment. Something’s changed.

My key light is often a single strobe. A single umbrella. I like the simplicity of that. The strobe empathizes the direction of the light and illuminates the face. The rest of the picture can be lit with natural light. But you have to be prepared for a backup fill light. A light that usually comes from the direction of the camera.

You place the strobe so that it follows the direction of the natural light. You try never to fight the natural light by coming from another direction. Adding strobe to the natural light outside makes a daylight studio. When you’re working inside, you try to remember what natural light looks like and see if you can re-create it. I’ve never been able to make a strobe look as beautiful as natural light.

The Print and Photography History

I love having the photograph in my hand. I love looking at the photograph. I love looking at a box of photographs. I just love the still photograph. 

I’m a huge, huge fan of photography. I have a small photography collection. As soon as I started to make some money, I bought my very first photograph: a Henri Cartier-Bresson. Then I bought a Robert Frank. 

I fell in love with the darkroom, and that was part of being a photographer at the time. The darkroom was unbelievably sexy. I would spend all night in the darkroom. 

I love photography. And I just eat it up. I feel like I’m an encyclopedia, you know, inside. 

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz Quotes Final Words

Thanks for checking out this list of Annie Leibovitz quotes. If you enjoyed the article, then we would be grateful if you could share it on social media or link to us on your own blog.

If you want to learn more about Annie Leibovitz’s photography and read more quotes from the master photographer, then check out our article Annie Leibovitz: Life Behind the Lens. Also check out Annie’s official Instagram for daily inspiration.

Have a favorite Annie Leibovitz Quote? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post 80 Annie Leibovitz Quotes on Photography appeared first on Photogpedia.

For over five decades, her culture-defining images and distinctive portraits have appeared on the covers of Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and Vogue among others, documenting modern society’s preoccupation with celebrity and appearance. 

Leibovitz is best known for her controlling eye, storybook style, and skill at coaxing unexpected behavior from her famous subjects. 

Her body of work is beyond impressive: the photo of John Lennon curled up naked next to a clothed Yoko taken hours before his death; a roped up Clint Eastwood; Demi Moore pregnant and Demi Moore painted; Whoopi Goldberg in a tub of milk and Miley Cyrus topless.

When asked how she sees her job as a photographer she responded with:

To see people as they are, as they imagine themselves, as they wish to be. To be witness, the friend, the judge, the accomplice. To record their moment.

Annie Leibovitz

Fifty years after she first walked into Rolling Stone magazines San Francisco office with a modest stash of black and white pictures under her arm, Annie Leibovitz remains the standard against which other editorial and portrait photographers are judged.

Related: 80 Annie Leibovitz Quotes on Photography

Annie Leibovitz Biography

Name: Anna-Lou Leibovitz
Nationality: American
Genre: Portrait, Editorial, Fashion, Advertising, Photojournalism
Born: 2 October 1949 (Westport, Connecticut)

Early Life

Annie Leibovitz was born in 1949 in Waterbury, Connecticut. Her father was a career Air Force officer, while her mother was a professional dancer. 

Due to her father’s profession, Leibovitz spent her childhood and youth in different states of the USA moving from one base to another.

In the fall of 1967, Leibovitz began her studies as a painting major at San Francisco Art Institute.

During the summer after her freshman year, Annie joined her parents at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where her father was stationed. Her mother had the opportunity to visit Japan and took Annie with her. 

On the trip, Leibovitz purchased her first real camera, a Minolta SRT101. 

The first thing she did was take it on the climb up Mt. Fuji. 

Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it.

Annie Leibovitz

That summer she continued to experiment with her new camera, and took photos around base, developing the film in the base’s hobby shop.

Learning Photography

When Leibovitz returned to San Francisco she signed up for a night photography class. The following summer she took a photography workshop and that’s when she decided that photography is what she wanted to do.

Photography suited me. I was a young and unformed person and I was impatient. Photography seemed like a faster medium than painting. Painting was isolating. Photography took me outside and helped socialize me. I felt at homes in the rooms where the photography students worked. There was a lot of angry abstract expressionists in the painting studios. I wasn’t ready for abstraction. I wanted reality.

Annie Leibovitz

Leibovitz’s earliest role models among prominent photographers were Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, and Jacques Henri Lartigue. 

We were taught that the most important thing a young photographer can do is learn how to see. It wasn’t about equipment we were using. I don’t remember being taught any technique. A camera was only a box that recorded an image. We learned to compose, to frame, to fill the negative, to fit everything we saw into the cameras rectangle. We were never to crop our pictures.

Annie Leibovitz

In the fall of 1969, Leibovitz took her camera with her on a trip to Israel, where she worked on a farm and studied Hebrew. 

She returned to San Francisco at the beginning of the year and began printing her Israel pictures in the school darkroom and going out every morning to take more pictures.

One of her photos from an anti-war demonstration was used for the cover of a magazine devoted to campus riots and protests.

It was the beginning of my career. Seeing that image on the news-stand is a moment that will stay with me forever.

Annie Leibovitz

Rolling Stone Magazine

That year, she submitted her portfolio, which included a portrait of poet Allen Ginsberg to the art director of the newly launched Rolling Stone magazine, Robert Ingsbury, and scored her first success. 

Jann Wenner, who was the publisher of the magazine, took Leibovitz with him to New York, where the young photographer took pictures during an interview with John Lennon. 

One month later, Leibovitz’s Lennon portraits were published on the cover of Rolling Stone.

…“Rolling Stone” started giving me assignments right away, which made me worry about having crossed over to the other side. I was selling pictures. The photographers I admired were not photographers who worked for magazines on assignment, but people who chose what they did from the inside – or so it seemed at the time. And I wondered if I was betraying something. And then I found out about what it meant to be published, especially what it was to have a photograph on the cover of a magazine, which is what happened a couple of months later. 

I can never forget the sensation of being at a news-stand and seeing for the first time my photograph transformed into the “Rolling Stone” cover. It was a lot different from having a photograph floating around in the wash, or pinned on a bulletin board at school. 

Annie Leibovitz

Leibovitz became the chief photographer of Rolling Stone in 1973, at the age of 23 and by 1974, had photographed most of the rock artists and many of the major political figures of the time.

Working with Writers

She collaborated with writers including Tim Cahill, Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe, taking photographs as they gathered story material. Her initial work consisted of candid shots taken while following subjects.

Writers, particularly writers with newspaper backgrounds, are used to working with photographers who come along with them to illustrate their stories. But a photographer may see different things than the writer does. I don’t think it matters whether the photos don’t match in a literal way what the writer brings back. The story might be better – fuller – with different points of view. If it’s a good story than the photographer and writer won’t be that far apart.

Annie Leibovitz

Touring with the Rolling Stones

In 1972, Leibovitz first covered the Rolling Stones for three dates on their tour of America – she also had an opportunity to watch Robert Frank work, who was making a film about the band at the time.

Three years later, Leibovitz received a call from Mick Jagger asking her whether she wanted to serve as the band’s official photographer for their 1975 tour. 

I went to Jann and told him that I wanted to go on the Rolling Stones tour. He said he couldn’t guarantee that there would be a job for me when I came back, but I thought it was too good an opportunity to miss. Robert Frank had photographed the Rolling Stones and now it was my turn. 

Annie Leibovitz

While on tour Leibovitz photographed the band on stage and behind the scenes, capturing life on the road and the isolation and loneliness that follows. With the rock and roll photographs also came a rock and roll lifestyle and Leibovitz ended the tour with a crippling drug addiction.

At the time, I thought the way to get the best work was to become a chameleon. To become so much a part of what was going on that no one would notice you were there. Of course, it was unbelievably stupid of me to pick that situation to become part of. I did everything you’re supposed to do when you go on tour with the Rolling Stones. It was the first time in my life that something took me over.

Annie Leibovitz

The Famous John Lennon Cover

Following the tour, Leibovitz returned to Rolling Stone magazine and continued her role as chief photographer.

Leibovitz’s best-known image from her Rolling Stone period is that of John Lennon embraced by the fully clothed Yoko Ono, taken on the day of Lennon’s murder – the Polaroid was taken just a few hours before the former Beatle was murdered by a deranged fan.

I thought about how people curl up together in bed, and I asked them to pose nude in an embrace. They had never been embarrassed about taking their clothes off. There was frontal nudity on the cover of Two Virgins, the first record they did together. They were artists, John had no problem with my idea, but Yoko said she didn’t want to take her pants off for some reason. So I said, “Oh, leave everything on.” I made a Polaroid of them lying together and John looked at it and said, “You’ve captured our relationship exactly.”

Annie Leibovitz

The picture looks like the last kiss now. Jann decided to publish it on the cover with no type on it except for the Rolling Stone logo. 

Annie Leibovitz

Set Up Portrait Photos

While with Rolling Stone, Leibovitz developed her trademark set up portrait technique.

The 1979 Bette Midler cover photo is a perfect example of a Leibovitz set up portrait. The idea of Midler laying on a bed of roses was inspired by the film The Rose which Midler starred in as a the lead character, Rose.

If I were preparing to photograph a dancer, I would watch them dance. I would listen to the musician’s record. Somewhere in the raw material was a nucleus of what the picture would become. It didn’t have to be a big idea. It could be simple. There’s a case to be made that the simpler the better. 

Annie Leibovitz

By the time Leibovitz left Rolling Stone in 1983, she had shot 142 covers for the magazine.

Moving to Vanity Fair

That same year, Leibovitz joined the newly re-launched Vanity Fair as a staff photographer. In 1998 she also began working regularly for Vogue. 

One of the reasons that I went to Vanity Fair was that I knew I would have a broader range of subjects – writers, dancers, artists, and musicians of all kinds. And I wanted to learn about glamour. 

I admire the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon, as much as I respected grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I’d had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

Annie Leibovitz

With a wider choice of subjects, Leibovitz’s photographs for the magazine ranged from presidents to movie stars to literary icons and world-class athletes. 

Leibovitz’s shoots also became known for over-the-top budgets, with Hollywood film production levels. Her locations often looked more like a film set than a photoshoot.

Advertising and Return to Photojournalism

In addition to her magazine editorial work, Leibovitz has created several award-winning advertising campaigns for the likes of American Express (1987) and Gap (1988).

In 1991, a collection of more than 200 of Leibovitz’s photographs was exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. She was the first woman to be so honored. 

Leibovitz’s mid-career work also saw a brief return to her early role as a photojournalist. 

In 1986, she was worked with FIFA to design and shoot the poster campaign for the World Cup in Mexico, and in 1994, she documented the aftermath of the sieges of Sarajevo, Bosnia.

Leibovitz was commissioned by the Olympic Games Committee to take portraits of participating athletes leading up to the games in 1996. This assignment yielded both a book, Olympic Portraits and a traveling exhibition. 

Leibovitz has also collaborated with many art organizations, including American Ballet Theatre, the Mark Morris Dance Group, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. 

The New Millennium

In 2003, Leibovitz’s partner of 15-years, Susan Sontag was diagnosed with leukemia, which ultimately led to her death at the end of 2004. Just weeks later, Leibovitz’s father passed away. 

Queensgate

In 2007, BBC caused mayhem when they misrepresented the portrait session that Leibovitz had held with Queen Elizabeth. The edited footage was made to look as though she had offended the Queen.

The controversy arose about two months after the pictures were published when the BBC claimed that the Queen had walked out while we were shooting. This was completely untrue, and although they retracted the claim and issued an apology to the Queen and to me almost immediately, the scandal had a life of its own. The story, which came to be referred to as “Queensgate”, wouldn’t die. Eventually, the head of the BBC resigned because of it.

Annie Leibovitz

Working with Disney

Also in 2007, Leibovitz was hired by Disney to produce images for their “Year of a Million Dreams” ad campaign. For the series, Leibovitz took photographs of several celebrities playing characters from classic Disney films – these include Kiera Knightly as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Scarlett Johansson as Cinderella and Roger Federer as King Arthur. The resulting images are some of Leibovitz’s best work.

Leibovitz Today

Leibovitz is as busy as ever and continues to be in demand, working on projects that range from the 2014 Marks & Spencer campaign to the iconic Pirelli calendar in 2016.

To date, Leibovitz has published nine books: Annie Leibovitz: Photographs (1983), Photographs: Annie Leibovitz 1970–1990 (1991), Olympic Portraits (1996), Women (1999), American Music (2003), A Photographer’s Life: 1990–2005 (2006), Annie Leibovitz at Work (2008), Pilgrimage (2011), and Annie Leibovitz (2014). 

She has been the recipient of a number of awards for her work including Photographer of the Year of the American Society of Magazine Photographers in 1984.

In 1991, she was decorated as a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the minister of culture in France for her contribution to Arts.

In 2009 she received The Royal Photographic Society’s Centenary Medal in recognition of her contribution to the art of photography. 

The New York-based Contact Press Images have looked after her archive and licensing since 1977. 

Leibovitz lives in New York with her three children: Sarah, Susan, and Samuelle.

Leibovitz’s Photography Style

• Set up portraiture
• Storytelling, narrative
• Painterly quality 
• Composite images, subjects posed
• Soft lighting, Rembrandt like

It’s difficult to define Leibovitz’s style of photography because she continually adapts her style to reflect the times and the demands of her clients.

Leibovitz today considers herself more of a visual artist who uses the camera as a tool for creating her narrative-driven images. 

Her photos have helped popularize a storybook photographic style that playfully mimics reality rather than directly reflecting it – representation by way of fantasy and canny exaggeration.

Leibovitz doesn’t shy away from her use of Photoshop to create some of her famous pictures. She even photographed the Queen against a grey backdrop and added a separate image of the palace gardens in post. 

I think it’s kept my career going for the last ten years, actually. It used to be, oh, you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. It’s not true. We’re not stupid. We look at something, we know, oh, that’s ridiculous, we know that’s not real. I’ve always believed in the intelligence of us as people. So we know when something – it will go in cycles. It will be like everything looks crazy and cuckoo, and then people will be sick of that and want it to be real again. And it will be real again. But that’s how we entertain ourselves.

Annie Leibovitz

How to Shoot like Leibovitz

To understand how Annie Leibovitz’s iconic images are made, then we recommend purchasing her brilliant book, Annie Leibovitz at Work which provides an invaluable insight into her working practice.

The book also features a section dedicated to answering her most-asked questions, such as: ‘what’s your favorite photograph?’ and ‘how much direction do you give?’

Below we’ve listed just a few of our favorite Leibovitz excerpts from the book to get you started:

3 Leibovitz Tips for Better Photography 

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Preparation and Planning

When it comes to preparation, Leibovitz is very meticulous and usually consults with clients or subjects many weeks (sometimes months) before the date of the shoot. Below Leibovitz explains where she gets her ideas from:

I do my homework. When I was preparing to photograph Carla Bruni, the wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, in the Elysee Palace, I looked at pictures of the palace. I looked at pictures of other people who had lived in the palace. Pictures of couples in love. Pictures that other photographers had taken of Bruni. She had been photographed many times before. I thought Helmut Newton had seen something in her that other photographers hadn’t. I knew she was a popular musician and I listened to her music. 

Of course, I carry around with me, like a backup hard drive in my head, a vast memory bank of the work of the photographers who came before me. I’m a fan of photography. A student, if you will. I collect photography books. Something in the history of photography might contribute to the style I choose to shoot in. The style of the photograph is part of the idea.

Annie Leibovitz

Working with Subjects

By the time the shoot comes round, Leibovitz has already built a rapport with her subjects and put together a concept and often storyboards. 

The below excerpt details how she persuades her subjects into the desired, frequently fun and humorous poses:

I’ve never asked anyone to do something which doesn’t seem right to them. And I don’t ask them to do something for no reason. There’s always some thought behind my pictures. I throw out several ideas and see what they want to do. When I photographed the performance artisy Rachel Rosenthal, for instance, I gave her three or four ideas. The last one was about being buried in the sand in the desert. That’s the one she got excited about. I always ask a subject if they have ideas.

Related Article: 150+ Portrait Photography Quotes

It’s a collaboration. Especially if you’re working with an entertainer, an actor or a comedian. I never make people do anything. But I’m a photographer. It’s a photo session. A lot of it is play. Painting the blue brothers blue, for instance. Or giving a subject a role, a fantasy, to act out. I’m interested in getting something unpredictable, something you don’t normally see. Even so, when the picture starts to happen, it’s often a surprise.

Annie Leibovitz

The Day of the Photoshoot

Leibovitz gives a lot of direction to her subjects leading up to the day of the shoot, especially when doing set-up portraits or cover-shoots. 

By the time the subject arrives on location, they’ve worked out what they can do. Lights, fans and props have been moved and moved again ad everybody is ready to get down to business. Leibobitz also stresses the importance of being adaptable and responding to happy accidents.

You set the stage for them. Once they are there, they like to have some direction. They like to be at least told they’re doing all right. I forget that from time to time. A lot of my work is post-decisive moment. It’s studied. A kind of performance art. It would be nice to be more spontaneous, but circumstances don’t always allow that. Nevertheless, as prepared as you are for one thing, you hope that something else will happen too.

As much as I love pictures that have been set-up, and as important as those pictures are to me, I’d rather photograph something that occurs on its own. The tension between those two kind of photographs is at the heart of what I do. It’s not a conflict, but sometimes it’s useful to remember that things are happening in front of you and you don’t have to complicate the situation. You can take what’s given to you. You just need your mind and your eye.

Annie Leibovitz

What Camera Does Annie Leibovitz Use?

Leibovitz’s first camera was a Minolta SRT-101, which she replaced in the early ’70s with a Nikon F. On her early assignments she would carry three camera bodies along with the following lenses: 35mm, 55mm and 105mm. 

In the mid-80s she started using a Mamiya RZ67 medium-format camera – this became her principal camera until she made the switch to digital in 2003. 

Leibovitz continued to use Nikon 35mm cameras for candid shots and her photojournalism work throughout the ’80’s and ’90’s. She also experimented with a Leica M6 for personal work in the ’90s.

Around 2003, Leibovitz made the switch to digital and hasn’t looked back. 

I believe you are better able to capture what you really see in color with digital. There’s a distinctive intensity in a digital file. Digital gives a more honest view of how things actually look, and with the advent of all these possibilities, I still want the pictures to look real. Whatever camera helps me do that is the camera I’m going to use. I’m not nostalgic about cameras.

Annie Leibovitz

Leibovitz first used the Canon 5D and 1DX series digital cameras. She now primarily uses a Hasselblad with a phase-one digital back and occasionally a Mamiya RZ Pro. She has also used various 35mm digital cameras: Nikon, Sony, Leica, and Canon. As of 2018, Leibovitz was shooting a Nikon D810.

When I talk about what the camera means to me, I mean the idea of the camera. What photography does. I’m not in to it because of the equipment, and I’m not concerned with the things that concern more technically acute people. I want to use whatever helps me take a picture in all kinds of light with faster speed and fewer problems. I changed my 35mm digital camera four times in one year. As soon as I hear there’s a better one out, I try it.

Annie Leibovitz

Leibovitz’s Favorite Focal Length

Leibovitz preferred field of view is 35mm, which allows for the inclusion of contextual and conceptual details. 

My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can’t come in closer with the 35 mm. 

For portraits, she has said she likes to use the 55mm (which is the first lens she owned) and 140mm on the Mamiya (the equivalent of 70mm in 35mm photography). She has called the Sekor 140mm F4.5 L/A Macro her favorite lens to use.

I enjoyed the sense of spontaneity I got from the 35mm digital camera, but after a while I missed the formality of the Mamiya 140mm lens. It’s a beautiful lens that I used to to take some of my favorite pictures. It is a long lens but you can make it feel a little wide if you want to. It’s similar to the 55mm on the Minolta. It is a graceful portrait lens.

Annie Leibovitz

Other Annie Leibovitz Resources

Recommended Annie Leibovitz Books

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• Annie Leibovitz at Work (Phaidon Press, 2018)
• Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016 (Phaidon Press, 2018)
• A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 (Penguin/Random House, 2010)
• Annie Leibovitz. The Early Years, 1970-1983 (Taschen, 2018)

Annie Leibovitz Videos

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (2006)

The South Bank Show: Annie Leibovitz (1993)

The Making of the Pirelli Calendar (2016)

Charlie Rose Interview (1999)

View our Annie Leibovitz playlist on YouTube for the Leibovitz behind the scenes videos.

Annie Leibovitz Photos

Fact Check

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Recommended Reading

Annie Leibovitz on Nine Assignments that Shaped Her Career
Once upon a time in Vogue
Annie Leibovitz on the shots that made her

Sources

Life is pretty strange anyway: Annie Leibovitz, Fototapeta
Talking Pictures with Annie Leibovitz, The Independent, 1994
That Old Master? It’s at the Pawn Shop, New York Times, 2009
Annie Leibovitz on Nine Assignments that Shaped Her Career, Racked, 2014
The Queen gave me career advice, The Telegraph, 2014
Jann Wenner, John Lennon, and the Greatest Rolling Stone Cover Ever, Vanity Fair, 2017
9 Smart Moves Annie Leibovitz uses to shoot great pictures, Phaidon, November 2018
Annie Leibovitz on the shots that made her, The Guardian, 2019

Annie Leibovitz at Work, Phaidon Press, 2018
A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, Penguin/Random House, 2010
Annie Leibovitz. The Early Years, 1970-1983, Taschen, 2018

The South Bank Show: Annie Leibovitz, 1993
Charlie Rose Interview, PBS, 1999
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens, 2006
Leibovitz lecture at John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, November 2011
Charlie Rose Interview with Annie Leibovitz, PBS, November 2, 2017

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