Book Designs

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

For this project we are doing some page layouts for a book on a specific artist (graphic designer, illustrator, animator, photographer, etc.) I think that this is a really cool project and a neat way for us to learn about successful people in the fields that we want to go into. 

The person that I chose to do my little part of the book over is Annie Leibovitz. I had heard about her beforehand and then I also heard a lot about her from my vis comm teacher who worked for her while he was living in New York. I thought she sounded like an interesting person and I am really fond of her photographs and wanted to do my part of the book on her.

This is the information that I have written on her and will go (most of it anyway) into the book. 


"Annie Leibovitz was born on October 2, 1949 in Waterbury Connecticut. She is Jewish, but nonobservant, saying “I’m not a practicing Jew, but I feel very Jewish” .She originally attended the San Francisco Art Institute to study painting, but then found photography. She lived for a short time on a kibbutz where she explored her photographic skills.
In 1970 she started working for the Rolling Stones. Leibovitz approached the founding editor, Jann Wenner who gave Leibovitz her first assignment to photograph John Lennon. Within a short time she was the chief photographer.  
During the Rolling Stones’ 1975 international tour she accompanied the band. Her favourite photograph being one that she took of Mick Jagger in an elevator.
On December 8, 1980 Leibovitz photographed John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The photograph was of Ono completely clothed and Lennon wrapped around her disrobed. Leibovtiz promised that the photograph would be on the cover and it was. She was the last person to professionally photograph Lennon before he was killed.
After working for Rolling Stones Leibovitz began working for the magazine, Vanity Fair. The same year that she began working for the magazine her first book was published. Leibovitz became known for her “wildly lit, staged, and provocative portraits of celebrities”. Some of her most famous are of Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore. She has also photographed celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Ellen DeGeneres, Scarlett Johannson and Kiera Knightly. Her photographs have appeared in Vogue, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker as well as other ad campaigns.
In 1991 she had an exhibit at the National Portrait gallery and was the second living portraitist and the first woman to be there. In 1999 she published a book entitled Women that was accompanied by Susan Sontag. In the book Leibovitz showed females in images from the Supreme Court to coal miners. Her most recent book, A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, shows her celebrity portraits as well as personal photographs from her life. These photographs are of her parents and children and Susan Sontag. She calls them “a memoir in photographs”. The idea was brought about by the deaths of Sontag and her father, which happened close together.
Recently she was hired by Disney to do a series for the “Year of a Million Dreams” and photograph celebrities in different scenes. She also took the photograph of Miley Cyrus that caused a commotion from parents due to the fact that the photograph suggested that she was naked and Cyrus was still involved with Disney.

Leibovitz is the mother of three children, Sarah, and twins Susan, and Samuelle named after Susan Sontag and Leibovitz’s father."

I think that she is a very interesting person and personally I like what she says about being Jewish because I identify with that a lot. 

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