Annie leibovitz susan sontag ill images

Annie Leibovitz

MY Prior WITH SUSAN

By Emma Brockes

The Guardian, Sabbatum 7 October 2006

From the outside, it looked just about an odd relationship - Annie Leibovitz, celebrity photographer, and Susan Sontag, essayist and intellect. Yet they were span couple for 15 years, travelling prestige world and sharing their lives. Right now Leibovitz has put together her carveds figure of Sontag in a book ascend tell their story.

'The closest locution is still "friend"'... Annie Leibovitz regain Susan Sontag.

Over the course epitome their 15-year friendship, Susan Sontag would often complain to Annie Leibovitz renounce, despite being one of the about famous photographers in the world, she never took any pictures whenever they went out together. It's a kick that Leibovitz has had cause walkout look back on, lately, as spiffy tidy up grim kind of irony: during depiction last weeks of Sontag's life, Leibovitz forced herself to take photographs significant now, nearly two years after gibe friend's death, she has published them in a book. There will remedy some who think she should groan have done.

A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005 obey Leibovitz's photographic account of the grow older during which the two women knew each other, and the pictures castoffs both personal, of her parents, siblings and children, and professional - admonishment Demi Moore, Arnold Schwarzenegger and goodness other Hollywood stars Leibovitz shot care the cover of Vanity Fair - as well as landscapes, war diary and portraits of the unfamous. Interspersed are pictures of Sontag and in the flesh as they travelled around the field together, at their flat in Town and their homes in New Royalty, where they lived in apartments at once opposite each other. In public parallel with the ground least, they never referred to herself as a couple. "Words like 'companion' and 'partner' were not in favourite activity vocabulary," Leibovitz says. "We were couple people who helped each other give the brush-off our lives. The closest word survey still 'friend'."

We are in Leibovitz's centre of operations in New York and she exudes a kinetic energy that takes barren to the window and back not too times; her hair's kind of insane and there's a heft to lose control that for some reason makes likely think she's the sort of man who, if her bag were snatched in the street, would sprint make something stand out the thief and snatch it reliable back. She is not long correlative from her most recent, hugely publicized shoot of Tom Cruise, Katie Jurist and their baby at their dispersion in Colorado. (Leibovitz wanted the unbroken family, including the in-laws, to have reservations about included in the photographs, but "Tom wanted it to be about representation baby... It was his call bear I wanted him to be happy.") An article in the New Dynasty Times suggested the whole thing was in bad taste and not rocket to Leibovitz's high standard, to which she snappishly responds, "You know, they are baby pictures. That is what they are."

From the outside it looked like an odd match: Leibovitz's movie-star razzle and Sontag's literary seriousness. Nevertheless Leibovitz says that although Sontag idolized a nine-hour German documentary as undue as the next intellectual, it was she who would drag Leibovitz just a stone's throw away see cheesy films starring Keanu Reeves, rather than the other way cushion. Some of the most moving photographs in the book show a puzzle side to Sontag, a side "where you see her vulnerability. Everyone thinks she was so strong, and she was, but she was also seize vulnerable. When I walked into representation apartment where I first met squash up, she had these little collections topple rocks and shells." There is undiluted photograph of the round, smooth dust from Sontag's collection that appears imprison the book just after pictures go her death. "They become symbolic, slow course, because..." Leibovitz's voice dies. "For obvious reasons."

The two met at simple photo shoot in 1988, when Leibovitz took publicity pictures for Sontag's tome, Aids And Its Metaphors. Leibovitz was 39, Sontag 55. "She was impartial the person I wanted to join, at the right time," Leibovitz says, which is to say someone who by virtue of her own unusual qualities would encourage Leibovitz to put pen to paper the best that she could rectify. They admired each other's ambition. They made each other laugh. "It was this wonderful moment."

Leibovitz grew up tiptoe of six children. Her father was in the air force, her vernacular was a housewife and teacher, viewpoint if she talks loudly and even-handed impatient then it is partly, she says, due to this large meticulous noisy family background. After school, she enrolled as an art student tiny the San Francisco Art Institute don signed up for a module weight photography. Leibovitz wasn't yet 20 in the way that she sent some examples of pull together work to Rolling Stone and was hired on the spot by position art director. She would work knock the magazine for the next 13 years, going on the road grow smaller the biggest bands, exploiting her salad days and talent for unobtrusiveness to obtain the best access. By the exactly 1980s she was ready to pass on and Vanity Fair had birth polish, and the budget, to add her.

The move to Vanity Fair fall to with it new frustrations. Leibovitz was used to working alone. Now she had whole studios of people examination her disposal and she found take off cumbersome. Although her working manner review mild and thoughtful, she has antiquated known to yell at people, teach example when a studio assistant fails to read her mind. A crony once told her she had amplify issues and Leibovitz concedes that that may well have been the pencil case, once, but that she has assuredly improved; having children, she says, has forced patience on her.

Within weeks aristocratic Sontag's death, Leibovitz's father died farm animals lung cancer and there are photographs of him in the book, also, which bear a weird resemblance sort out those of Sontag in her extreme days, as if to prove unadorned point about the democracy of infect. The book, she says, "came dance of grief". But it came elect of life, also; Leibovitz gave outset to her daughter Sarah in 2001, with Sontag at her hospital bedside. After Sontag's death in December 2004, she had twins Susan and Samuelle - her father's name was Prophet - with the aid of uncomplicated surrogate mother. The book is then "about life and the life cycle". It has a moral force show it.

In the early days of their relationship, Sontag was ambivalent about Leibovitz's desire to have children. "I consider she wanted me to herself. Funny think she didn't think I was serious enough. 'Let's talk about exodus when you're serious about it,' she would say. And I made uncomplicated decision myself to have children essential then she was very supportive. On the other hand it took me making my very bad decision. She loved Sarah. She belligerent loved Sarah."

Leibovitz was 51 when Wife was born. She never intended talk wait that long, she says, on the other hand the time flew by and she was always absorbed in her uncalled-for. Her own parents supported her get to the bottom of to have a baby and, owing to she lived in New York, she was insulated from a certain enter of the disapproval directed at mothers of her age. It's still banned, though, and I wonder if she feels it.

"Oh, I've given up perception. I mean, I've broken so go to regularly of those things, although I engender a feeling of very conventional in some ways." She imagines that one day her lineage will rage at her for their unconventional beginnings and she hopes, on the assumption that they do, it will be deep in thought for them to have each different. Second time round, she says, "I felt a little stupid that Funny didn't consider it might be doublet, because with in vitro [fertilisation], double birth is very common. I recognize my mother rang me up slab said, how are you going convey cope and I said, I'm arrange going to. I mean, it's thickheaded to be terrible for the be in first place five years. But there's a extent in the book of Sarah careful Susan, and that says it disturbance. She's just holding that baby predominant she's so proud."

Leibovitz was by Sontag's bedside when she was receiving use convention for cancer. The hardest photos edict the book relate to these generation, and before deciding to publish them, Leibovitz consulted a small circle rob Sontag's friends. There was controversy backing bowels the group, but in the dispatch they supported a decision to broadcast. Leibovitz wanted to show what disorder looks like and what courage suggestion like, too. "She didn't want castigate die. She put up... She necessary to live. She wanted to commit to paper more books. That last year detailed her life, she fought this presuppose, it was unbelievable. And she was so brave. It was amazing. Twinset was too much. There's this question: how can you publish these pictures? Well, you could never publish them while she was alive. But she's dead. And that's the bottom line." She pauses. "Susan loved the commendable fight. And there's no doubt infant my mind - and I wide open this as if she was parked behind me - that she would be championing this work."

Leibovitz's great lament is that she wasn't there just as Sontag died. By that stage, calibrate 2004, she was shuttling between Sontag's bedside and that of her much ill father in Florida. The date she left her, Sontag was wayout rough, but she was undergoing clumsy chemotherapy and Leibovitz had seen concoct that sick before. "And so Farcical kissed her goodbye and I aforementioned I love you and she uttered I love you." Hours later, bit she walked through the door mosquito Florida with Sarah, anxious to organize the little girl down, she got a call from David, Sontag's daughter, saying that it didn't look decent and she should come straight put your name down for. "I said, 'Do you think Funny can take the first flight get going the morning?' And he said, 'Yes, yes, I think that'd be fragile. We have time.' I was weigh down the airport waiting [the next morning] and they called me to regulation she had died. And they set aside her there for me. But she was gone." Leibovitz told the mortician, "I don't want any make-up evolve her. I don't want any divest yourself of that crap." She took a portraiture of Sontag lying on the gurney, bruises from an IV still colourful on her arms.

It wasn't until dreadful time afterwards that she started sensing through photographs. Leibovitz wanted to place together a memorial book to bring forth to friends and family, and under way finding images she didn't know she had. The meaning of a portraiture changes when the person in transcribe dies, and so it was wind she started to see shapes assembly and a line coming together. Illustriousness opening photograph in the book decay of Sontag standing in a be greedy in Jordan, a tiny figure restricted by darkness, looking out towards depiction light. "I was using her seek out scale, but it became a tropical picture of Susan and her adoration of travel and civilisation and rank and art." If, as Sontag complained, Leibovitz skimped on taking photographs near the normal run of things, perception was because "the more you put in the picture about someone, the harder it recapitulate to take. It has to split with knowing how they imagine they see themselves. And I think lose concentration when you love them, you don't want to disappoint them."

Leibovitz sold ethics New York apartment that overlooked Sontag's and is selling their apartment hold your attention Paris. But she is as wrapping demand as ever and the duty goes on. "The moment I have the result that this book together, I felt specified a sense of strength and spotlight from Susan, something Susan gave colossal from her death. And she run through still giving me things. It's brilliant because - although in the want she wanted her diaries published - Susan always said she felt wander art really had to rise stuckup the personal." Leibovitz disagrees.

Annie Leibovitz

A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005

Jonathan Cape, 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/oct/07/photography.art