Enrique Cerna Interviews Annie Leibovitz
This is a transcript of an interview with Annie Leibovitz on Conversations at KCTS 9 which aired on January 16, 2009.
Other Transcripts:
AL: Oh, thank you, thank you.
EC: Well let’s talk about your career. I mean, 1967 you enroll at the San Francisco Art Institute. When you went there, did you have any idea whatsoever that you would one day become a photographer?
AL: No, no. I...I went as a, actually I went to the San Francisco Art Institute thinking I was going to be an art teacher. I was going to teach art. I was enrolled in the painting program there. And, uh, of course the first semester I was there I had an art history class and Fred Martin taught it and he made it quite clear, you couldn’t be an art teacher until you became an artist. And so I…I still didn’t know what that meant. And I, and I, you know…I wasn’t such a great painter.
I did like, I loved life drawing. And, um...but at that time, you know, the Art Institute, the style of painting coming out was very abstract expressionist. It was the Vietnam War, the end of the Haight-Ashbury. It was kind of a dark San-Francisco period and, uh, the abstract painters were angry and it was very...Painting was very isolating and, um, the photography department was young and had a sense of...you know, there was a lot of social activity going on. And the camera, to a young person like myself, it was like having a friend. It was someone, something you could...that would take you out. Take you out to places that, you know, of course, still taking me out...
EC: Right. To a lot of places, and around the world. And meeting different people...
AL: I took a night class in photography and then, then uh, and then started working for Rolling Stone a couple of years later, even before I finished school. ‘Cause Rolling Stone was a little rag paper, based out of San Francisco...
EC: Based there in San Francisco. Was it, like, 1968 when you actually bought your first camera? It was a Minolta?
AL: It was a Minolta SRT 101. My father was in the Air Force, and it was after the summer... after the first year of painting at the Art Institute. My family was stationed in the Philippines, my father was going in and out of Vietnam. And uh he came back, I did not want to go spend the summer with the family, and he came back to uh to the United States and dragged me to the Philippines. And then I ended up going with my mother to Japan and I bought... I needed something to do, I bought a camera. And uh you know, you buy a watch, you buy a camera, you go to Japan... I just started shooting with it, started using the base darkroom to develop and then went back to school and took a night class in photography.
EC: So let’s go back to San Francisco because as you mentioned before... still shooting for Rolling Stone even though you were still going to the Art Institute...critical things that happened is that you took some photos at a war protest that made the cover of Rolling Stone. You hadn’t been doing this for very long, but boy wasn’t that an opportune thing.
AL: I was still going to school. And I would…pretty much... what I did at school...the school had a darkroom and I would go out during the day, take pictures, come back at the end of the day, develop them, and then have them printed. And um my boyfriend at the time was working, did work for Time Magazine...and he always thought I should be doing some work for Rolling, Rolling Stone. I think he, I think he just thought, you know, you should Rolling Stone and he should do Time and I don’t know what he was thinking. He um, uh, drove me over to Rolling Stone with my pictures that I shot the day before, from the rally, from the peace rally, and...I also brought along some pictures that I had taken with, you know, that, over the last 6 months, I spent some time in Israel. I went and I lived on kibbutz for several months. And Rolling Stone saw the pictures and started putting me to work right away.
EC: Now, Rolling Stone really plays a key role in your career.
AL: They...we, sort of grew up together. We, I...learned to do…developed through working for Rolling Stone. Totally. The conceptual work really came out of doing those covers for Rolling Stone Magazine.
EC: But Rolling Stone really...it kind of gave you an open door to sort of do what you eventually became really.
AL: Totally. I was there for 13 years. And you know we moved from San Francisco together to New York and I think that was a very difficult move. It was very hard It was the beginning of the end of Rolling Stone as I knew it…it felt much more commercial moving into New York and we really...we all had to grow up. We felt like we were staying forever young working out of San Francisco and doing the work that we did and, you know, what we did…I was...I think what Rolling Stone instilled in me, and I was so lucky, imagine being a young person working at a place…
EC: You’re in your twenties!
AL: ...In my twenties…they instill at a very young age that what I did mattered and was important. And I say that in that, this, this book At Work that I just released. You know where I’m trying to set examples, or show what I learned along the way. I think it’s so important to believe in what you’re doing and care about what you’re doing. And I was so lucky to have a place where I was surrounded by people doing the same thing in a time when, you know, our country was sort of politically charged at that moment you know…in the early 70s and...working with Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe and...
EC: Jan Winter
AL: Well I don’t know...
EC: But he also gave you... an even bigger opportunity that happened in Dec. 1970 I guess it was, when he invited you to come along and shoot photographs of an interview he was doing with John Lennon.
AL: I heard rumors in the office that he was going to New York and he was going to do the Rolling Stone interview with, with John. And I sort of volunteered myself and asked if I could go. And I said I would stay with friends and I would fly youth fare, which I think was $75, to go across the country. And, uh, I sort of talked him into taking me. And um he was really a sort of another, um, you know, sort of...experience that really sort of set the tone for how I would work with well known people. I mean he was just, John and Yoko they were just very very, you know, straightforward and normal and honest and, uh, caring and, um, and they, they helped me.
EC: They were cooperative.
AL: Yes, cooperative. Yes, I knew there was a work.
EC: Well, didn’t Yoko say that, Geez, it was so nice of Jan to bring someone so young with him? Because they were used to very well-known photographers.
AL: I found that out just recently. My sister worked on this documentary from Photographers Life you know for PBS, the American Masters... I didn’t really know all these years that she...that they had these feelings. But now of course it makes complete sense.
EC: And there’s that photo that ended up on the cover, where John is just looking at you. And he just has this kind of stare.
AL: I wasn’t really ready for that kind of photograph to be so straightforward...you know a person looking straight back at me like that. I think it was…I actually was taking a light meter reading with one of my… I, I had two cameras. And one of them had the 35 mm lens on it and the other one had the little longer lens, the 105. Which I used to use to...I would take that camera, which had a built-in light meter, and take a light meter reading. And so I was taking the light meter reading, and he just lifted his head and looked straight at me and I clicked the picture at the same time. And when we got back to San Francisco Jan chose that picture for the cover. I was, you know, heartbroken... because I really liked the more wide angle lens pictures that, you know, showed more of where they where they were and their environment. Um, you know, I grew to like that picture…it took me years to like it. I just thought it was…that kind of picture felt to me very standard. Felt very, kind of, normal. And I liked, I’ve always liked environmental pictures that pull back a little bit and you see more.
EC: Ten years later you would end up taking a photo of John and Yoko together... John is naked, giving her a kiss, but only hours before he was shot and killed by Mark David Chapman.
AL: I know it was very eerie, strange circumstances. And you know I don’t know if I’ve ever really gotten over that it happened like that. I remember right after that happened I wanted every picture to count so much. I wanted...I was photographing Bruce Springsteen right after...you know, it was the next cover. He had just recorded the album The River. And, uh, I took him ice skating on the New Jersey river which was frozen over. He barely knew how to ice skate but the idea of like, ice skating on a river of ice. But I was looking for those metaphors. Those...I was looking...it reinforced more and more how much I wanted a picture to work like that. Because obviously the...it was the John and Yoko photograph had its own story beyond anything that I could ever imagine.
EC: Their relationship?...And didn’t John say that it really caught their relationship?
AL: Yeah, yeah.
EC: You know this book, Annie Liebovitz At Work, what is interesting to me is that the other two books, which were much thicker and bigger, had a lot of photos. But this book, while it does have photos in it, there’s a lot of writing. And you tell how you do what you do.
AL: Well if, if...I’ve always wanted to do this book. I’ve always wanted...for 10 or 15 years I’ve wanted to do the making of the photograph. I wanted to do a book of the making of the photograph...on the making of a photograph. The only thing that changed is that I thought I was going to pick ten photographs and go into them and dissect them and talk about them. And I was...I didn’t want to necessarily do the well-known photographs. I just thought I would take the best stories. And then when the Queen episode happened next year.
EC: We’ll talk about that.
AL: ...I said, you know what, I’m just going to write about, let’s just, just, just diffuse all of this. I’d like to really write about you know, how, the process of taking pictures. And in doing that...what was supposed to be a 40-page small book that I could use you know when I wanted to eventually, which I’m hoping to eventually do, teach...You know that thing about always wanting to teach...I do, I do plan at some point to teach and it was an idea to have that kind of a tool...It turned into…it was supposed to be a 40-page book, and it turned into a 240-page book with you know 100 photographs. But it does, it is directed to a young photographer. It is directed to a young person interested in maybe doing the kind of work that I’ve done. It takes you through the making of those pictures...and there’s an idea, or there’s a story, or there’s a lesson that you know I learned with each of those pictures. And it takes you through that.
EC: Let’s talk about some of the photos. You mentioned the Queen and I want to kind of clear up some things there...because there was a BBC documentary kind of behind the scenes of the Royals as they lived and there is a scene in there where you are shooting the Queen. You were commissioned to do a portrait of her and she’s on a fairly tight timeline and uh when I was watching that...
AL: Queens usually are, yeah. (laughs)
EC: I wouldn’t know (joking). But it seemed like, in looking at it, it seemed like she was a little touchy that day. Maybe it was all business. But there seemed as if maybe she was kind of grumpy that day and not that happy with you, but maybe that wasn’t the case...
AL: You know the truth is, I’m so used to people not liking to have their picture taken. I think it’s a very difficult...it can be a very difficult process for some people. It’s very psychological. I don’t want to exactly equate it to going to the dentist, but it can be a daunting experience. Not of course for a queen. And she probably, it was interesting to do my research on her. Not only is she probably the most well-known person in the world but she’s probably also the most photographed person in the world. I mean I was just overwhelmed by the amount of work there was to see of her over the years. But the truth is she’s in her eighties. And um you know She…the cape she was wearing was like 75 pounds. And um I think I was told I was interrupting one of her favorite television shows for the day. But um and she walked in and she was a bit you know cranky to begin with and a bit feisty. But right after it was over I turned to her press secretary and I said “God I just love her, she’s great.” Because she was irritated but she was walking into the shoot and then she, she just sort of got to work and she didn’t leave until...
EC: She’s a pro. Actually if you watch this, she’s a pro.
AL: Great resolve, great sense of duty, all those. She didn’t leave until I said we were done. She never walked out. And that’s why she was incensed about... what came out and what was said because she said she would never walk out on a photo shoot.
EC: Although she did seem a little testy when you asked her if you could remove her crown.
AL: And she had every right, and I thought she was being funny, when she said “What do you think this is?” What happened was is, this kind of shoot where you have twenty or twenty-five minutes, they’re very well planned out. Especially at this age she’s not going to make a change in clothing. So everything is sort of planned. She was supposed to come in without it on, and then we were supposed to add it. And so she came in with it on. So I said, I said...isn’t it a little bit dressy? What I really meant was that I wanted to try this very regal, formal, clothing that she had on... without the crown. I thought she…I thought she, on some level, she didn’t need to have the crown because there was so much. And I thought you could see her a little better without the crown. And of course she was upset: She says well “Dressy! Dressy? What do you think THIS is?” And I thought she was being funny. But then again she went ahead and she did take it...take the crown off and she also put it back on.
EC: Well some of the other photos that you’re very well known for is the Demi Moore photo...very pregnant Demi Moore. There’s also the photo of Whoopi Goldberg in the tub of milk...which I think is just hilarious...Arnold Schwarzenegger...with the cigar in his mouth on the white horse.
AL: That’s a wonderful, to me a wonderful section of the book about... you know um, having done this, I mean it’s hard to believe I’m going on 40 years doing this. But, um one of the wonderful things is about having a relationship with someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger over all these years and seeing him though these different stages of his life and taking pictures the whole way. It’s really a chapter on knowing someone over a long period of time. It’s nice. It’s nice, very nice.
EC: I think the thing that makes me curious about what you’re able to do...and particularly these kinds of situations that you’re trying to create...where do the concepts come from? Where do you come up with these ideas?
AL: Page 48 in the…there’s a section in the back called the ten most asked questions...
EC: But they’re unusual.
AL: There is actually a section about conceptual work and where do they come from and...they come from the people. They come from, the kernels, the ideas, the raw ideas are somewhere within the lives of the people that I photograph...and in the book I actually talk about the Robert Penn Warren and the Tess Gallagher pictures which are which were done not for Rolling Stone but actually done for Lifetime magazine in the early 80s...and it’s very blatant about where the ideas come from and...and you know looking back at the pictures you realize for the first time that what’s happening is, having read their poetry, I took their poetry and really started to incorporate it in the portrait and tried to illustrate their poetry by using them and that was the beginning of it you know. It was starting to happen but I became it wasn’t, it's not as blatant anywhere as in those photographs of using the poems to create the tone.
EC: And the visual.
AL: Yeah.
EC: The picture that you took of President Bush and his leadership group at the White House. How in the heck did you get them all to cooperate?
AL: Well it was very heavy time for the Bush administration. I mean 9/11 had just happened. They were feeling, they felt like they had Afghanistan under control. They were feeling pretty confident about themselves at that moment and they sort of opened the doors to the White House and Vanity Fair Magazine procured this shoot with them and I went down to Washington...and basically choreographed that picture but they you know they were also at that moment they were planning the Iraq War...I mean it was still not known. So it was a pretty, you know, sort of cocky moment for him. I mean he you know I didn’t do too much in that picture except for asking the President to put his hands in his pockets (ADD PICTURE AGAIN AND move CLOSE IN) cause I know he stands like that a lot. He stands a lot like he just got off his horse, you know, so...
EC: The Texas kind of swagger. As you look back on your career who would you like to photograph that you haven’t done?
AL: Hmm…Dead or alive?
EC: Your choice.
AL: I am very happy with. I am pretty much I get to photograph almost everyone or anyone that I do want to photograph...through the work working for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and of course Vogue. But if I have to go back to, I would probably think of people I missed opportunities to photograph. I always regretted not photographing Martha Graham. I would have loved to photograph Martha Graham. Elvis Presley. I would have liked to have photographed Elvis Presley. I think, he would have been, you know. Marilyn Monroe. They seem like people who took their pictures...you know they worked with the photographer...so I think I would have liked to work with them.
EC: One final question. Do you like getting your picture taken?
AL: You know, I don’t dislike it. I sort of…I know, um, I know too much about it. I think it depends who’s doing it...David Bailey just photographed me in England. Of course I’ve always admired his work. But it was so interesting, he did something that was so touching. He...we were working, and he was taking my picture and he sort of...the camera was on the tripod...reached across and held my hand. And I was so touched by that. I thought that was so beautiful to sort of like, break the wall and just hold my hand. And I was very very touched. So I think it just depends who is taking the picture. And...it’s, it’s fine. I don’t mind. It’s fine.
EC: You’d rather be on the other side of the camera.
AL: It’s, it’s a strange...I think…there are people who do like to do it or are good at it. There’s even a small section in the book about charismatic people who…the camera does love them. And it took me years to…I was very reluctant to admit that there were people who really, you know, like Nicole Kidman or Johnny Depp or Cate Blanchett. I mean, they...I just worked with Sean Penn and he just sat down and I took like three frames and said “Thank you very much.” They...they just. The camera likes them. The camera loves them. I mean. So, you know, I’m not one of those people...
EC: Yeah, but what you’re good at doing is capturing those people.
AL: I feel very responsible to the work and I feel very lucky and it’s been a great ride, a great ride.
EC: Thank you for the great ride and I hope we have many more great photos in the years to come.
AL: Thank you.
EC: Annie Liebovitz, her latest book is called At Work, and it’s very fascinating, good photos. But it’s a good read I think...because if you really want to find out about what you do, I think that that’s the thing to look at, particularly those who are interested in a career or just for themselves. Thank you for your time.
AL: Thank you.
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