Life Through a Lens

« Annie Leibovitz…Annie Leibovitz…Annie Leibovitz… »
The documentary has started. Admiring contributions from friends, relatives and subjects ranging from Hillary Clinton to Mick Jagger seems to have one big obsession : Annie Liebovitz !
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (2006) is a celebratory documentary of the 58-year-old photographer, directed by her sister.
It shows her progress from a military family obsessed with recording itself.
Through her start at the Rolling Stone magazine,she quickly came to attention with a unique style by her close collaboration with the subject. She followed bands on tour like the Rolling Stones, giving us lot’s of very memorable iconic images.
Then, she found herself trapped into the drug-fuelled years of the rockn’roll era.
In 1983, Annie Leibovitz joined Vanity Fair and was made the magazine's first contributing photographer,with the celebrity culture served by the magazine, her portraits became more provocative which could be describes sometimes as 'pretty shallow'.
The obvious look of the Blues Brothers faces painted in blue seems to have paid off, from simplicity to very detailed choreography when she gets George Clooney to take off his jacket in front of a ring of half-naked models shivering in the sea.
Her current position of a portraitist refers to the work of Joshua Reynolds, who was the most important and influential of 18th century English painter, specialising in portraits, with paintings like « Colonel Acland and Lord Sydney, The Archers » (1769), or « Robert Clive » and his family with an Indian maid, (1765).
Life Through a Lens is also revealing about her long-term relationship with Susan Sontag, an American literary theorist, novelist, filmmaker, and political activist.
Losing her partner and her father in a short space of time has obviously affected her profoundly and some of the film’s most moving scenes are when she talks about her loss and expresses it through her work. With a gentle humility, it shows us that Annie Liebovitz is a woman first.
A noble documentary telling us an extraordinary life achievement.

Published in www.deadfoxfanzine.com