Annie Leibovitz

            Born in 1949 in, Annie Leibovitz enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute intent on studying painting. It was not until she traveled to Japan with her mother the summer after her sophomore year that she discovered her interest in taking photographs. After returning home, she began taking night classes in photography.

            In 1970 Leibovitz approached Jann Wenner, founding editor of Rolling Stone. Impressed with her portfolio, Wenner gave Leibovitz her first assignment: shoot John Lennon. Leibovitz’s black-and-white portrait of the shaggy-looking Beatle graced the cover of the January 1971 issue. Two years later she was named Rolling Stone chief photographer.

            When the magazine began printing in color in 1974, Leibovitz followed suit. Among her subjects from that period are Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and Patti Smith. Leibovitz also served as the official photographer for the Rolling Stones’ 1975 world tour.

            In 1983, Leibovitz joined Vanity Fair and was made the magazine’s first contributing photographer. At Vanity Fair she became known for her wildly lit, staged, and provocative portraits of celebrities. Most famous among them are Whoopi Goldberg submerged in a bath of milk and Demi Moore naked and holding her pregnant belly. Since then Leibovitz has photographed celebrities ranging from Brad Pitt to Mikhail Baryshnikov. She’s shot Ellen DeGeneres, the George W. Bush cabinet, Michael Moore, Madeleine Albright, and Bill Clinton. She’s shot Scarlett Johannson and Keira Knightley nude, with Tom Ford in a suit; Nicole Kidman in ball gown and spotlights; and, recently, the world’s long-awaited first glimpse of Suri Cruise, along with parents Tom and Katie. Her portraits have appeared in Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, and in ad campaigns for American Express, the Gap, and the Milk Board.

            Leibovitz met Susan Sontag in 1989 while photographing the writer for her book AIDS and its Metaphors. Sontag told her, “You’re good, but you could be better.” Though the two kept separate apartments, their relationship lasted until Sontag’s death in late 2004. Sontag’s influence on Leibovitz was profound.

My Life and Photography

          “Be creative, own it, and most importantly, have fun!” Those inspiring words of wisdom were given by my 12th grade English teacher before sending my class off to work on our senior project. Our project was to create a scrapbook based on our growth/change throughout our four years of high school. My freshman year was filled with excitement when new friends were made and anxiety seemed to take over when it came to a new school. Sophomore year I knew who my friends were and I somewhat had an idea about who I thought I was. During my junior year, I had the pleasure of knowing how it felt to love someone but also the horrible feeling of what heartbreak felt like. My senior year was by far my favorite year. I have never laughed, loved, or danced so much in my entire life. But I would have never realized how much I had change through those four years if I wasn’t assigned this project. Just like how Sontag says, photography “means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge—and, therefore, like power”, is how exactly I feel when I look back through my scrapbook filled with “stereotypical” prom pictures, crazy weekend adventure shots, and awkward first day of freshman year photos. 
         I agree with Sontag’s analogy between society’s view of photography and the prisoners’ perception of the shadows In Plato’s Cave. In today’s society our “photographing eye” is altered to see what we feel is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe, identical to the prisoners, which view shadows of statues that are projected onto the wall of a cave. When the prisoners see the actual object which the shadow is a product of, they feel enlightened, kind of like how we feel when “photographs alter and enlarge our notions” of reality.
         Reality is what it is, nothing more and nothing less. We are living beings who visually perceive unthinkingly and in doing so we make our visual reality. And photographs are a huge part of that visual. We are lost in our own thoughts and our own ideas of the world, and we so rarely see reality. The camera sees something, and then records it by taking a photo. And through the photograph, one single image, you get a taste of what happened/what is happening/what will happen.
     Sontag’s theory that “photography is an elegiac art” couldn’t be more precise. I believe that the people, who say photography isn’t art, are closed minded. I always have seen photography as another way to express myself. Just like dancers who dance to music that fits their mood/emotion, everyone has their special way to express themselves, regardless if a person is a dancer, a musician, or an artist.
        However some people don’t just use photography as self-expression. Some use it as a way to “prove” something that “we hear about, but doubt”, to others it’s a way to keep a record of where they have been or who they have met, and in other words a life story and everyone’s is different. 
       Photography is also used in media form such as TV, newspapers, or something as simple as a family slide show about their trip to Italy. Photos “fill in blanks in our” memories that we so how seem to forget. It could be anything from the smallest thing, like what you wore, to the biggest thing, like where you went.
      As the months and the years pass by, I continue to add on my college years to my high school scrapbook; merging the old friends with the new friends, combining old inside jokes with the new inside jokes and most importantly, collaborating the old memories with the new memories. The more I look through my scrapbook, I recognize more and more where I have been and where I have come from, and those are two things I could never forget.

The View From Inside

This is a photo of the Capital building taken from inside the Denver Art Museum, in one of many unique windows that covers the building's outside walls. Inside was filled with amazing photographs and paintings from artist around the world and from many different centuries. The works of art were breath taking and wonderful. Thanks for taking us Roddy!

Border

This is where I crossed the Texas/Colorado border to start the chapter in my life: Collge. I cant wait to meet new people, make new friends, and learn more than my brain can handle. Already busy with picking classes, orgaizing my dorm, and getting involved I know Denver I where I was born to be for college. I can just smell it in the air. This is my time to shine. And I'm going to live it up!

"If you want something you never had before, you've got to do something you have never done before."

 - Drina Reed



Small World

Cheyenne, my roommate Jamie and I attended the Rockies game against Arizona and they actually won! Even the score was only 2-1 it was still a good game. The guy in front of us kept yelling different cheers, it was pretty entertaining. While on the way back to campus on the light rail, we met two guys on the hockey team. It turns out they were the ones who wrote all over our white eraser board on our dorm room door, along with trying and failing horribly at trying to steal our suite mates party rug that was underneath their door.

On the Road

After 17 hours in the car with my mother, Im very happy to say we arrived safely in Denver. We left Friday afternoon with my best friend Kaitlyn and most of my belongings in tow. We drove 7 hours to Norman, Oklahoma to be reunited my other best friend Katie, who is going to college at OU. She showed us around campus and introduced us to Classic's where they combine candy and soda, like Dr.Pepper and Hot Tamales. Its not as wierd as it sounds I promise. The next morning I had to say goodbye to my best friends, definitely one of the worst things I have ever had to do. After the tears cleared up, my mom and I drove 10 more hours through Oklahoma and Colorado. Along the way we got turned arounded a few times, saw a camel, and were amazed by the huge windmills. There were between 20 and 30 windmills on one farm we passed, they are incredible.

Typical Night

One of my last nights in Houston was filled with more laughter than I have heard in along time. it was jam-packed with singing country music as loud as we could, dancing in a local Steak-n-Shake drive thru, going to a midget gone wild party, trying to feed a dog mustard, and most importantly, spending quality time with friends that matter most. On top of all that, we watched this movie called Shrooms. I have never used the word trippy, or any other word for that fact, that many times within an hour and a half. As oddly as it sounds, these events might sound really random and out of the normal for most people, but last night was pretty much a typical night in h-town for my friends and I.