Book Description

With more than 200 color and black-and-white photographs, this stunning collection spans the first 20 years of work by one of the most important photographers of our time. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

fantastic photo book
annie's book is an incredible collection of celebrity images with a series of text that describes her ascent to the top in her field

One Of The Most Celebrated Photographer of the 20th Century!
Annie Leibovitz's name is as recognizable as her photos. This collection spans two decades filled with her best work mostly from Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, but including some previously unpublished ones. She has the knack to bring out the side of a celebrities personality unexpected, and a way to turn a comic photo on it's side for another uplift of laughter. Some serious, some funny and many sentimental, Annie Leibovitz's photos invoke thought, humor, tenderness and empathy in every frame. A woman from modest beginnings shows the world what she has accomplished so far. It is an impressive feat.

Layers of Meaning Like the Brush Strokes of Old Masters
Seeing so many celebrity photographs from the beginning of Ms. Leibovitz's career unveils many of the most effective methods that she uses to create her deep insights into the subject of the portrait. Although you may feel the subtlety of her work viscerally, these comparisons make it easier to appreciate the purposefulness of how the effects are brilliantly captured. If you are like me, this book will enhance your already deep appreciation of her work.

Before going into all the reasons I like this book, let me mention that the book contains tasteful nudity and sexual situations that would probably cause an R rating for a motion picture (or possibly something a bit stronger, like an R plus). Many parents would be uncomfortable with some of their children seeing these images. So judge the appropriateness of this wonderful book for your own family.

First, Ms. Leibovitz is looking for the soul of the person. Who are they at the core? This is captured by establishing a composition that overtly expresses this inner kernel of truth. For Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold, this is captured by mud wrestling. For Muhammad Ali, you see a fully confident, capable man fully comfortable with himself and the world.

Second, she captures the subject's personality with posing and expression within the composition. Whoopi Goldberg's playfulness is captured by a composition that has little bits of her beautiful blackness emerging from a milk bath, with a characteristicly wry, happy smile.

Third, she shows the social mask that the subject uses. Lily Tomlin's face poses behind a television set image. Diane Keaton is shown wandering around with her face averted from the camera to capture her preference for privacy and appearance of shyness. Keith Haring appears wearing nothing but his painted on designs.

Fourth, she connects her subject to another person where that helps to establish part of the person's reality. John Lennon appears in foetal position with Yoko Ono, in that famous image from this book's cover. The Rolling Stones are literally flying through the air at the same time while performing. The Grateful Dead are asleep on each other's shoulders. Interestingly, she is usually able to do this with a humorous, light touch that dispells some of the celebrity power of the person.

Fifth, she lets a little slip in composure or a little blemish show where that adds to the underlying reality. Louis Armstrong looks scared in one classic portrait pose, while totally relaxed and in control in a less formal setting. Mick Jagger's partially healed scar is shown in another image. Jodie Foster puts on an intelligent expression that shows the Yale graduate rather than the young female star.

Sixth, she captures motion in ways that give the kinesthetics of the person and situation wonderfully. For example, a group of prisoners and family members hug at Soledad Prison in California at Christmas in 1971. You see many different relationships in this one image. It's like a microcosm of all humanity.

Here are my favorite images:

John Lennon, New York City, 1970

Louis Armstrong, Queens, New York, 1971

Christmas, 1971, Soledad Prison, California

The Grateful Dead, San Rafael, California, 1971

Ray Charles, San Francisco, 1972

Lily Tomlin, Los Angeles, 1973

Richard Pryor, Los Angeles, 1974

Andy Warhol, New York City, 1976

Tennessee Williams, Key West, Florida, 1974

Ron Kovic, Santa Monica, California, 1973

The Rolling Stones, Philadelphia, 1975

Brian Wilson, Malibu, California, 1976

Muhammad Ali, Chicago, 1978

Robert Penn Warren, Fairfield, Connecticut, 1980

John Lennon and Yoko Ono, New York City, December 8, 1981

Greg Louganis, Los Angeles, 1984

Bruce Springsteen, Asbury Park, New Jersey, 1987

Whoopi Goldberg, Berkeley, California, 1984

Twyla Tharp, New York City, 1989

Michael Jackson, Los Angeles, 1989

Mikhail Baryshnikov, New York City, 1989

After you have enjoyed the book, I suggest that you make a drawing that does a similar unveiling of someone you know well. You might even consider a self-portrait. Ms. Leibovitz says those are the hardest to do.

Look deeply into those all around you and see the truth . . . as well as the fictions.

The human face of celebrity
No-one captures the human face of celebrity on film like Annie Liebowitz (except for the brilliant Herb Ritts). This softback book is a wonderful chronological history of Annie's work over a 20 year period.

From the playful magic of Whoopi Goldberg in a bath of milk, Bette Midler under a blanket of roses and Sting baked in mud, this book shows the wit and insight of Annie Liebowitz. To lovers of either photography and/or celebrity this book is a must. Reasonably priced at $40 USD it also features the "foetus" shot of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. To students of photography, this book demonstrates her inventiveness and ability to portray the 'human' behind icons and public creations. A book you can leaf through time and time again whilst delighting in Ms Liebowitz's art.

Got Milk?
Annie Leibovitz has searching eyes which catch the light, the action, the expression of people the way Ansel Adams had the eyes for nature. In this beautiful coffee table book, one of the favorite pics is of Whoopi Goldberg. The contrast of her dark caramel skin peeking through the surface of a bright white milk bath is astounding. The curved artistic forms of Yoko Ono & John Lennon show them as they were--as one. You just want to slowly trace your finger over their shapes.

There are over 200 photos to delight the senses. Most are of famous people which Ms. L has had contacts with from her work at Rolling Stone and other venues. These performers seem to open up to this photographer and are willing to show something more than their "star" profile. Even people who are not into art or photography, like this book.

A grand illusionary celebration.

Thanks for your interest & comment vote--CDS ... Read more

Amazon.com

Each of the extraordinary portraits made by photographer Annie Leibovitz for her book Women stands on its own. Looked at together, these "photographs of people with nothing more in common than that they are women (and living in America at the end of the twentieth century), all--well almost all--fully clothed," writes Susan Sontag in the book's preface, form "an anthology of destinies and disabilities and new possibilities." Leibovitz, who in her years working for Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair magazines has photographed hundreds of celebrities, turns her lens on a wide range of ordinary and extraordinary female subjects: coal miners, socialites, first ladies, artists, domestic-violence victims, an astronaut, a surgeon, a maid. What she creates is a reflection of contemporary American womanhood that mirrors both women's accomplishments and the challenges they still face individually and as a group.

Leibovitz demonstrates her own range as a photographer in this body of work, shooting in the studio and natural settings and working in both black-and-white and color film. She depicts model Jerry Hall wearing a little black dress, a fur coat, and high heels, staring frankly at the viewer from a velvet chair in a plush red parlor while her naked infant son nurses from her exposed right breast. Schoolteacher Lamis Srour's eyes--the only part of her face visible behind her heavy black veil--illuminate a dark black-and-white portrait. Leibovitz frames actress Elizabeth Taylor and her dog Sugar by their shocks of snow-white hair. She captures four Kilgore College Rangerettes, a drill team, at the apex of their kicks--white-booted legs pointing up, obscuring their faces and revealing the red underpants beneath their blue miniskirts. There are many more wonderful and unexpected images here, over 200 in all. The delight in discovering them awaits readers. --Jordana Moskowitz ... Read more

Reviews (42)

I'm not Thomas, I'm his daughter, he used my computer to ord
er from Amazon and Now His Name is Stuck on My Account

So much for a title.

Annie Leibovitz's book requires no words. Sorry, Susan, I didn't read your text. The best way to enjoy Annie's photos is to set aside your search for a defining message about women. There isn't one. Women are varied creatures just like the rest of humanity and nature.

Don't you just love looking at them? Don't wish you could get a closer look? Don't you wish the interesting one's would stand in just the right light so you could get a better look? Didn't you always think Hillary C. was beautiful, but you didn't know why?

Thank you Annie Leibovitz for taking the interesting women and standing them in a beautiful light and binding them in a huge book so we can stand and stare as long as we want.

Enough said.

Image as Everywoman
Fiction is my preference when writing book reviews, because I love the complexity of words, stories, and the vagaries of human nature with its endless permutations. But when I received Leibovitz's astonishing compilation of photographs as a gift, I thought I might attempt an impression of page after page of females, as seen through the professional eye of one of the most important photographers of our generation.

Who has not gazed in awe at Leibovitz's unusual perspective, the beautiful made even more so? But I want real women with wrinkles and dirt under their fingernails, the kind of women overlooked in the rush to worship human perfection. I want to see if there is a balance, not just the too thin, too gorgeous, too self-indulgent. In that regard, I believe Women contains a preponderance of well-groomed elegance, albeit impressive, for instance a breathtaking portrait of Gwyneth Paltrow and her mother, Blythe Danner. This particular image contrasts a young woman in the blush of her feminine power with the graceful progression of years that adds to a woman's complex attraction. To be sure, there are folios of celebrities, socialites, all those who live in the rarified strata of entitlement.

While not as numerous, the presentation of real women like me, those who inhabit my world, are so powerful as to diminish the bland compositions of society's darlings. The studies of abused women jump off the pages, eyes glazed, the immediacy of domestic violence tattooing their faces, staring into a future devoid of hope; a remarkably insightful photograph of Ellen DeGeneris, virtually unrecognizable under a layer of cracked white greasepaint; two pre-adolescent girls in the back of a pickup truck, displaying a row of leggy blonde Barbie's, with Ken in a faux high school letter jacket, his plastic Prom Queen sporting a crown atop hair that cascades down the length of her body; three young Latino women glare accusingly at the lens, displaying gang colors with pride, ambiguously dangerous; the lines of age score lived-in faces, eyes shadowed by years of struggle, etched finally by the exhaustion of daily survival. For me, these pictures contain the essence of womanhood, untainted by ubiquitous vanities.

In all, Leibovitz "sees" these women, their strengths, frailties and vulnerabilities. This series of images is a walk through the multi-hued, textured world of women, esoteric, generous, often brutally honest and unflinching. Luan Gaines/2004.

A moving and exceptional book
This is definately my favorite book, and one I enjoy giving to special women friends. Annie Leibowitz has managed to capture the full spectrum of women, from the subdued and simple to the succesful and sophisticated. It is a moving book and a celebration to women's individuality and uniqueness. I warmly recommend it.

Just a name
Although the idea of this book is worthwhile, I am amazed to find so many of the images out of focus. She is supposed to be a fine photographer, but maybe it is this title that has allowed her to feel okay with displaying such poor examples of portraits. It seems she rushed through the work just to get the book published as I don't sense that she put too much heart into the work.

Very Enlightening
I loved the book "Women," this book not only gave information on what all these amazing women do for a living, but it showed the pictures of them at work. A lovely tribute to WOMEN all over the world! ... Read more

Book Description

The work of photographer Annie Leibovitz has defined celebrity photography for thirty years--her iconic images of musicians, actors, dancers and artists like John Lennon and Yoko Ono, David Byrne, Whoopi Goldberg, the Blues Brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi), Louis Armstrong, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ray Charles, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keith Haring, Mick Jagger, Bette Midler, Patti Smith, Clint Eastwood, and Ella Fitzgerald have defined how we see those figures. "Stardust: Annie Leibovitz 1970-1999" presents images of all of the aforementioned performers as well as other famous figures including Hillary Clinton, Muhammad Ali, Carl Lewis, astronaut Eileen Collins, and Jann Wenner, in work previously published in such magazines as "Rolling Stone", "Vogue", and "Vanity Fair". This volume, published on the occasion of a recent exhibition at New York's International Center for Photography, is as much a tribute to the ever-increasing power of celebrity in contemporary culture as it is a testament to Leibovitz's skill behind the lens. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great Book Excellent collaboration w/Barishnikov
This book is excellent! Hard to get, but really worth the search. It is part of the Photographers at Work Collection and, though it's brief (50+ pages), it's is a very interesting look at Leibovitz's work. Though you may have seen some of the pics in this book in other collections, you should check the rest. Must have! ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Don't waste your money!
While I love Annie Leibovitz's photographic talents, I was disappointed with this soft-cover magazine.Many of the pictures are in her other better books, and others are uninteresting.Let someone else buy thismagazine, and you go to their place a read it once. I'm refunding this bookback to Amazon.com.

Annie Leibovitz is brilliant!
A wonderful display of some brilliant work ... Read more

Amazon.com

The work of two of the most celebrated photographers of the late 20th century is explored in this pair of monographs. Each of the extraordinary portraits made by photographer Annie Leibovitz for her book Women stands on its own. Looked at together, these "photographs of people with nothing more in common than that they are women (and living in America at the end of the twentieth century), all--well almost all--fully clothed," writes Susan Sontag in the book's preface, form "an anthology of destinies and disabilities and new possibilities." Leibovitz, who in her years working for Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Vanity Fair magazines has photographed hundreds of celebrities, turns her lens on a wide range of ordinary and extraordinary female subjects: coal miners, socialites, first ladies, artists, domestic-violence victims, an astronaut, a surgeon, a maid. What she creates is a reflection of contemporary American womanhood that mirrors both women's accomplishments and the challenges they still face individually and as a group.

Leibovitz demonstrates her own range as a photographer in this body of work, shooting in the studio and natural settings and working in both black-and-white and color film. She depicts model Jerry Hall wearing a little black dress, a fur coat, and high heels, staring frankly at the viewer from a velvet chair in a plush red parlor while her naked infant son nurses from her exposed right breast. Schoolteacher Lamis Srour's eyes--the only part of her face visible behind her heavy black veil--illuminate a dark black-and-white portrait. Leibovitz frames actress Elizabeth Taylor and her dog Sugar by their shocks of snow-white hair. She captures four Kilgore College Rangerettes, a drill team, at the apex of their kicks--white-booted legs pointing up, obscuring their faces and revealing the red underpants beneath their blue miniskirts. There are many more wonderful and unexpected images here, over 200 in all. The delight in discovering them awaits readers.

The Sixties is the product of a 30-year collaboration between another celebrated photographer, Richard Avedon, and writer Doon Arbus, whose images and words combine in this volume to create a compelling portrait of one of the 20th century's most tumultuous decades. Avedon, whose portraits of some of the best-known personalities of our age have graced the pages of Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and The New Yorker magazines since the early 1950s, was prolific during the '60s. Looked at together, his images from those years create a visual time capsule. This large book is filled with a cacophony of Yippies, Black Panthers, Weathermen, Hare Krishnas, Andy Warhol Factory Superstars, pop artists, rock musicians, astronauts, pacifists, politicians, electroshock therapists, media correspondents, civil rights lawyers, antiwar activists, and more--all shot against his signature white background. Arbus, a novelist and writer for magazines including Rolling Stone and The Nation (and the daughter of photographer Diane Arbus), conducted interviews with many of the subjects. Snippets of those conversations provide an intimate and unforgettable document of the tension, vulnerability, anger, recklessness, hope, and empowerment many people experienced during that era. Brief biographies of the portrait sitters, as well as a chronology that spans the first signs of the war in Vietnam in 1960 to its final conclusion in 1973, provide excellent context for the images. The Sixties is riveting. --A.C. Smith and Jordana Moskowitz ... Read more