An exhibition bringing together almost 200 photographs from 1990-2005 by one of the world’s best known portrait photographers Annie Leibovitz was also on display at the Fotografiska, and given the enormity of the content and amount of space given over to the collection it really did feel like an epic exhibition.
Not only were there some of the famous portraits from Leibovitz’s career featuring the likes of Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Scarlet Johansson and the famous nude portrait of a heavily pregnant Demi Moore that featured on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, there were also many photos from Leibovitz’s assignments covering Sarajevo in the early 1990s as well as Hilary Clinton’s election to the US Senate.
Sitting alongside her assignment work are a series of landscape photos taken in Monument Valley in the west of America and in Wari Rum in the Jordanian desert, and a vast array of personal photography documenting scenes from her life including the birth of her 3 daughters, holidays and time spent with her parents and her lover Susan Sontag. Rather than just a simple collection of happy events or times however several of the photos in this part of the exhibition depicted sorrowful or painful times and events that had affected Leibovitz and were part of her life, including several of Susan Sontag on her deathbed.
Accompanying the exhibited photographs was a short film narrated and featuring Annie Leibovitz briefly discussing her past, family and following the discussion and selection process of the photographic work to be displayed in the exhibition. Certainly one of the largest exhibitions I’ve been to and one that does span several emotions across it’s content, though many people did recognise the Demi Moore pose and were drawn to that photo as a centre piece I suspect they left with a keen interest and appreciation for many of the other photos featured and the bravery in showing some of the more personal and affecting photos from what must be a huge personal collection.
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