"Annie Leibovitz At Work"

[dhgee]

Just got my Amazon order. The book is more of a reminiscence of interactions with her subjects and her editors, not technical setups. (She does talk about a little of this in the last chapter.)  I like her writing style which is spare and from the way it reads, quite honest and direct. The images are mostly her b/w work, in various formats, with some color (including the Queen's portraits). The book is satisfying and encouraging. She talks about her education - didn't know she started out a painter! - and her family, and her early Rolling Stone days. I'd recommend it for getting a sense of her approach to shooting, not for technical stuff.

[jake]

Cool. I'll look for it. I have her big photo book from the retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, and I recommend it, not necessarily for the pro work reproduced in it but for the family photos. Those are exceptional. One of the French philosophers, Roland Barthes, wondered in an essay what made some diaries interesting as works of literature (Rilke's for example) while others remained merely diaries (Barthes' own and thus his essay.) I felt the same way about these family photos of Leibovitz's. Whatever the point at which family snaps transcend the private and become expressions of the art of the personal, her photos make it.