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| A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005 | 
 enlarge | Creator: Annie Leibovitz
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $75.00
Buy New: $39.99
You Save: $35.01 (47%)
New (37) Used (18) Collectible (14) from $35.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  103 reviews
Sales Rank: 7311
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 472
Shipping Weight (lbs): 8.2
Dimensions (in): 13.9 x 10.5 x 1.7
ISBN: 0375505091
Dewey Decimal Number: 779.2092
EAN: 9780375505096
ASIN: 0375505091
Publication Date: October 3, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New book. Title page has a very small smudge, Back DJ has a very tiny tear--barely noticable.
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Product Description
“I don’t have two lives,” Annie Leibovitz writes in the Introduction to this collection of her work from 1990—2005. “This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it.” Portraits of well-known figures–Johnny Cash, Nicole Kidman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Keith Richards, Michael Jordan, Joan Didion, R2-D2, Patti Smith, Nelson Mandela, Jack Nicholson, William Burroughs, George W. Bush with members of his Cabinet–appear alongside pictures of Leibovitz’s family and friends, reportage from the siege of Sarajevo in the early Nineties, and landscapes made even more indelible through Leibovitz’s discerning eye. The images form a narrative rich in contrasts and continuities: The photographer has a long relationship that ends with illness and death. She chronicles the celebrations and heartbreaks of her large and robust family. She has children of her own. All the while she is working, and the public work resonates with the themes of her life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 98 more reviews...
 Leibovitz's photography is still okay - but her personal life overwhelms the display December 26, 2006
86 out of 112 found this review helpful
This book has to be reviewed on two levels. First as a retrospective of Annie Leibovitz's photography from 1990 - 2005. On that level, the presentation is sumptuous and greatly enhances even the most mediocre photos. Few of these photos are as breathtaking as much of the work Leibowitz produced in earlier years. Most of the photos would, in fact, be indistinguishable from the work of thousands of others photographers were it not for their famous subjects, such as Al Pacino and Willie Nelson.
One troubling aspect of this collection for me was Leibowitz's seeming imitation of the styles of other photographers from the past such as Dianne Arbus and even Leni Riefenstahl, the infamous creator of the Nazi propaganda film "Triumph of the Will". Her portrait of the muscular torso of Sylvester Stallone is terribly reminiscent of Riefenstahl's style. Likewise her portraits of two Las Vegas dancers, resplendent in their bejeweled costumes, is compared with portraits of them as ordinary middle-aged women without makeup. Effective, but in many ways a reflection of Arbus's famous style. Portraits of Colin Powell and Norman Schwartzkopf look like those from virtually any high-end portrait studio.
The vitality and originality I used to associate with Annie Leibovitz is largely absent in this collection. On the whole, it is a disappointing portfolio.
Leibovitz perhaps intended this collection to be a different kind of statement, truly a statement about her "life". And it is, uncomfortably so perhaps.
There are many, many photographs of Susan Sontag, Leibvoitz's partner. Sontag is remembered (and reviled) by many for her strident anti-Americanism. It is difficult to reconcile these "loving" picures of Sontag taken by her lover with the Sontag who exorciated Americans very shortly after 9/11 and told them they deserved the disaster they got. Hard to put away feelings of animosity while seeing so many photos of her in Leibvoitz's book.
Leibovitz also includes many photos of her family. These are nothing more than snapshots for the most part, no matter how deftly they have been manipulated in the printing process. (I am really curious as to whether Leibovitz does her own printing. Much of the impact of many of her photos in this collection owes to their printing and the large presentation size, not their content or composition.)
In some ways, Leibovitz would have been better served by putting all of her family pictures into a separate section. As such it would have chronicled the physical decline of her parents while their children and grandchildren grew and would have been a powerful testament to familial love.
Leibovitz makes it clear that this is a deeply personal statement. She says "I cried for a month. I didn't realize until later how far the work on the book had taken me through the grieving proces. It's the closest thing to who I am that I've ever done." That sentiment may indeed account for the ordinariness of the photos in this book. Leibovitz is showing us her life - as the title implies - and not simply showcasing her best work. On the other hand, that presumes the admirer of Leibovitz's photography is interested in her personal life with Sontag and family and not just her photography. I'm sure some will enjoy this collection: I did not find it especially noteworthy.
Jerry
 Annie Liebovitz - A Photographer's Life: 1990 - 2005 October 14, 2006
60 out of 74 found this review helpful
Annie Liebovitz, one of the world's most talented photographers, has released a book that is not as much an exhibit of her world-renowned photography as it is an open expression of her love for family and close friends. The famous people that we've come to expect from a Liebovitz release are still there, although not as prevalent. The world-class photos that have always been her trademark are still there, although not as prevalent. Annie's soul and personal feelings that have been seen sparingly in past releases, are now most prevalent. If you're buying this book for the usual Annie Liebovitz material, you would do best to ignore this release. If you're wanting to see a side of this photographer that the world has yet to see, please don't hesitate to make the purchase.
 Disappointing December 30, 2006
57 out of 71 found this review helpful
The first thing about this book, you should know, IMO, is that most of the photos in this book are too big for one page, so they are presented split down the middle by the spine of the book. This is a TERRIBLE problem. Why would someone produce an image where the prime focal area is split down the middle? This alone ought to keep you from wasting your money on this hefty tome.
The second thing you should know - partly because some of the other Amazon reviewers have pointed it out - is that the vast majority of the photos in this book are shapshots of Susan Sontag, the author's intimate partner. But even if all this were potentially OK for me, I would still regret buying the book. See below.
The book evidently started as a personal memoir/elegy of Susan Sontag for distribution to friends at Sontag's funeral. I don't know what I was expecting. Half the book is a collection mostly of personal pictures of one famous person: Susan Sontag. Susan in the mountains, Susan at home, Susan on trips all over the place, Susan sleeping on the couch, etc. The remainder are devoted to celbrity photos and pictures of family, particularly Liebovitz's parents, many of which seem to have a snapshot quality of being unprepared. Too many of them fail to rise above this.
Liebovitz is well known as a photographer of celebrities. Those photos of are indeed imposing. There is a certain authority that Liebovitz brings to her journalistic photos. But this book is mostly not these portraits. It's about the author - which, by the way, is clearly stated as early as the title of the book. Many of these pictures are snapshots that, frankly, are mostly unremarkable.
A great artist can produce numerous pictures of the same subject. Think Cezanne. Nevertheless, I really am sorry I spent money on this perhaps a bit too personal farewell to Susan Sontag, no matter how deeply felt. I wish this book was better than it is. I think Liebovitz worked very hard on it. As you can see, this book retails at $75. It is offered by various online venues at around $50. What a deal, right? Wrong.
As artistically uneven as the current Brooklyn Museum exhibition November 15, 2006
46 out of 66 found this review helpful
I think no one will deny that Annie Leibovitz has become one of the great celebrity portrait photographers of our time, producing images that have had an iconic quality to them, such as the famous photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono which was published originally in Rolling Stone magazine. Indeed, I do regard these portraits as part of her only artistically significant work that she has done for decades, and without a doubt, these remain some of the most impressive images currently on display in the Brooklyn Museum exhibition that's based on this book. Among my favorites include the group portraits she took of President George W. Bush and his senior staff of foreign policy and national security advisors approximately one month after the 9/11/01 Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States and a relatively recent one of controversial film director Michael Moore and his production staff. But, with a few notable exceptions, I think her other work is substantially inferior. It's probably no surprise that I had received a polite, but strongly negative, reply from someone at the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography years ago, when I had asked whether the center would ever consider mounting an exhibition of her work; the respondent noted that her work was not "creative photography"; in other words, it did not merit inclusion as a notable example of fine art photography.
Most of the photographs in this book - though thankfully not nearly as prominent in the Brooklyn Museum exhibition - are devoted to her family and friends. Regrettably most have an inferior "snapshot" quality to them, lacking the intimacy and emotional impact of, for example, photographs taken by Nan Goldin that were collected in her classic monograph debut "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency", and in later, more recent works. The only photographs which come close to Goldin's elegant images are those of her dying father and a dying Susan Sontag, the distinguished writer and long-time lover of Leibovitz's. But even these pale in comparison to the worst of Goldin's images of her family and friends taken over the course of several decades. Another notable exception is her series of images taken in war-torn Bosnia back in the early 1990s; however, the images do not strike me as nearly as impressive as those by such celebrated photographers as Luc Delahaye or James Nachtwey, who have spent years covering wars with their cameras. If you've been a devoted fan or a long-time admirer of Annie Leibovitz and her work, then I won't discourage you from purchasing this book; otherwise, I think there are a multitude of truly superb books of photography taken by some of our truly great fine art and photojournalist photographers of our time, but Leibovitz's latest book isn't among them.
A Visual Autobiography: Excerpts from an Exceptional Life December 10, 2006
33 out of 37 found this review helpful
1990 - 2005 is the period of time brilliant photographer Annie Leibovitz elects to share with us. Not only is this hefty and beautifully designed volume of her work of artistic significance, it is also one of the more understated yet tender musings on the life cycle as it affects one person.
One of the most sought after portrait photographers in the world, this volume does not disappoint those whose major interest is seeing the big celebrities in the inimitable manner in which Leibovitz captures them: her portraits arrest time and allow us to linger in that sacred moment of connection between artist and model like few others can achieve. Here are photographs of Sylvester Stallone with his aging upper torso alone showing - a study in the inevitable pull of gravity that age diminishes youth; images of stars like Nicole Kidman and Jack Nicholson, of political figures like Bush cum cabinet and Arnold Schwarzenegger, writers like Joan Didion, William Burroughs - the list is long.
But what grounds this collection is Leibovitz' self portraits in the tub, images of her family both immediate and extended, and one of the more sensitive tributes to the much missed Susan Sontag who lived with Leibovitz through her chemotherapy and demise. Not since Don Bachardy drew the last days of his dying Christopher Isherwood has there been a more respectful yet wholly immediate audience with death.
Leibovitz' writing adds to the portfolio, a bonus here as she is usually not a woman of words. But taken as a whole this is a volume of the work and mind and heart of Annie Leibovitz that is well worth its high cost: these images will stay with the viewer indelibly. Grady Harp, December 06
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