Gallery 2
17 January - 15 March 1998
curated by: Marek Grygiel
Annie Leibovitz
photographs
Annie Leibovitz is no doubt the best known woman-photographer in the world.
While her retrospective exhibition is beginning its tour across Europe, Leibovitz is considered both by her peers and critics to be one of the greatest portrait photographers alive today.
Her first works have been created on the west coast of the United States in the 70s. First she worked as photographer associated with Rolling Stone magazine, and very quickly became its art. editor. In the 80s her works started to appear in major American magazines like Life, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Esquire, Vogue, Vanity Fair or the New Yorker. She had also frequent overseas publications, among others in Paris Match, Max, Stern, London Independent Magazine and many others.
Among her best known photographs are those of actors, political figures, artists. As Leibovitz was closely affiliated with the New York art. scene she photographed such celebrities as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Demi Moore, Michael Jackson, William S. Bourroughs, Andy Warhol, Whoopi Goldberg, Maryl Streep. At least one picture from this period - the photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono taken on the day of Lennon's tragic death - will gain her eternal fame.
Annie has also been involved in reportage work, documenting, among others, Sarajevo crisis.
She has been awarded the most prestigious prizes. She has won the American Society of Magazine and the International Center of Photography awards for Best Photographer of the Year, Grammy, Kelly and Clio.
Leibovitz became the second living photographer and first women ever - to be exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution's prestigious National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
She had her works exhibited in Americas, Europe and Japan.
The newest works included in the current exhibition, which was prepared especially for several Eastern and Central European cities, were shown for the first time in the National Gallery of Slovakia in Bratyslawa at the beginning of November 1997. The Center for Contemporary in Warsaw is the second venue on the tour.