The photographer extraordinaire: Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer and a world-famous portraitist, who has done shoots with the likes of John Lennon, Demi Moore, Queen Elizabeth II, Joan Armatrading, and many other celebrities. Her work has featured on the covers of celebrated magazines, and has been exhibited in the leading art galleries of America. Leibovitz started her career in 1970 with the Rolling Stone magazine as a staff photographer, and stayed there for more than 10 years. It was here that she honed her very personal style, seeking revealing moments in her pictures. No wonder her intimate photographs of musicians and celebrities helped define the visual template of the magazine. While at Rolling Stone, she photographed John Lennon with his partner, Yoko Ono, and Lennon was so impressed that he requested her to use the picture for nothing but the cover page. That was the last professional photo of John Lennon, as barely hours later, he was shot dead.

Later, she went on to work with the Vanity Fair magazine for an international ad campaign that led her to do photoshoots with celebrities from diverse backgrounds. For this work, she bagged a Clio award in 1987. Since then, her work has been featured in a lot of renowned galleries. When National Portrait gallery organized an exhibition of her work in 1991, she was the first woman and only the second living portrait photographer to have received such an honor. The Brooklyn museum did a major retrospective on her in 2006. The show was later moved to Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, and later to Berlin, Germany. Leibovitz is known for her unique lighting style and penchant for bold colors and poses. Many of her photographs have become a fixture of art galleries and coffee table books. It goes without saying that some of them are paradigm works of portrait photography, and are used as standards. Her work with Demi Moore made the front cover of Vanity Fair, and was highly publicized.

In 2011, she was nominated alongside two other photographers for the Asia Pacific photographer of the year award. She is the author of more than a dozen photography books, and her work makes news on five continents.