Annie Leibovitz @ Work

chinatown lanterns, originally uploaded by jen_maiser.

I saw Annie Leibovitz speak at City Arts & Lectures on Monday. I have always followed her work closely, but have never seen her speak. And I have a feeling that hearing her speak will be causing a shift in my photography.

Leibovitz was speaking on the occasion of the release of her book: Annie Leibovitz At Work. I haven't bought the book yet, but my understanding is that it's more of a textbook which addresses technique and composition and equipment.

Leibovitz received her professional training at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she began as a painter. She quickly learned that photography was her forte -- it was more immediate and more social.

During the Monday lecture, she read from her book and a portion was about what she learned as a young photography student.

"We were taught that the most important thing a young photographer can do is learn how to see. It wasn’t about the 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 camera’s rectangle. We were never to crop our pictures. We went out every morning and took pictures and developed them in the darkroom the same day. Since the prints were washed in communal trays and everybody’s pictures were lying there with everybody else’s, you tried hard to come back with something good. In the evening we would sit around and discuss our work. We were a community of artists."

I had a family member in town this week and had my camera out most of the time -- I shot a couple hundred photos. And I could hear Annie ringing in my ears during my photos. Reminding me to see. Reminding me to shoot an entire image instead of lazily knowing I'd crop later. Reminding me to compose. I am so lucky to have heard her.

If you're interested in hearing this interview, it will be played on KQED on January 4, 2009.

Comments

[rache]

i really, really love this shot. can i buy a print from you? seriously. it's awesome, jen.

[molly]

love the photo also. i always think of san francisco in my mind's eye as colored pink...this photo evokes that for me for sure.

[cd]

When I took photography in high school, my Dad issued a similar instruction. He was very much against making the picture in the dark room (via various effects or cropping). He said real photographs are made in the camera.

I think digital photography may have changed his view a bit now. I should ask. But he still gives much higher praise for that which is captured than to that which is created after.

[Gudrun from Kitchen Gadget Girl]

I am also a big Annie Liebovitz fan - the first show I saw was at a now-defunct gallery on Mission, close to 3rd, kind of around the corner from MOMA. It was a beautiful show of her life size photos of people, mostly women I think.

Thanks for the information about the rebroadcast of CA&L!

[Katrina]

I heard AL too and the echo she left in my head has been fading. Thank you for bringing it back.

I've always enjoyed how you see and composed before this, before the reminders, so it will be fun to see if your vision changes at all. There's always a freshness to your images.