These Photographs

Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Annie Leibovitz speak about her new book, Annie Leibovitz At Work, a book targeting the young photographer, with sections about various kinds of work--from nudes to groups to the creation of specific photos, like the one here, taken hours before John Lennon was killed. The funny thing about hearing artists speak is that they are artists and not, for the most part, public speakers. But we can let this go, especially for someone like Leibovitz (pronounced with a V, not a W), who had the chutzpah to ask the Queen to remove her "crown" (apparently it is a tiara, not a crown).

When my aunt handed me and Zach our tickets, she said, "You're front and center." We found our way to the Orchestra, showed the usher our ticket, and sure enough, seats 3 and 4, row A, were open. So we sat and I kept thinking, "Wow, that was really nice of Julie to give us these seats. I wonder where she's sitting." I glanced around, saw a few familiar faces, but as the lights dimmed, I turned my attention forward and thought, "If I'd known I was sitting up front, I would have worn high heels." Julie told us afterwards that they were for the Dress Circle (the lower balcony) and it just so happened that nobody noticed and that nobody came to claim those seats. That explains why our seats were even better than the Powells'.

For the next hour and a half, all that stood between me and projections of Annie's photos on a screen the size of the proscenium was the proscenium itself. As far as I was concerned, there were not 2700 people behind me. Just me, Annie, and the photographs (and Zach).

Ms. Liebovitz spoke of her early days at Rolling Stone, where she began working at the age of 21 and by the age of 25 was chief photographer. It wasn't until her early 30's that she became the chief photographer at Vanity Fair. I'll be lucky if I've moved out of Julie's house by the time I'm 30, much less working as the chief of anything. Hearing her speak about working closely with Hunter S. Thompson and the Rolling Stones, learning lessons about photographing actors from Sylvester Stallone, and seeing politically significant photographs from Nixon to Obama, I realized that here was a woman who went to art school to be a painting teacher but emerged as a photographer who would go on to weave herself into so many significant moments--politically, socially, and culturally--whether or not she knew it at the time. I think it's pretty amazing, actually, to build your own celebrity, willingly or not, based on a behind the scenes relationship to everything that is going on around you. There is a section in her book called Being There. And that is all that she does. She is present and aware, and always being there. I think there's something to be learned from that.