Annie Leibovitz, Photographs, 1970-1990 Hardcover

Leibowitz did many of these 242 photo-portraits (one-third of them in color) for Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair , yet others included here are previously unpublished. Posed shots and fanzine fare alternate with more penetrating character studies. Norman Mailer, Hugh Hefner, Tennessee Williams, Susan Sontag, Mikhail Baryshnikov and an utterly pretentious Ivana and Donald Trump hide nothing from her gaze. Some pictures are tacky (Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold mud-wrestling), some are blah (Philip Glass, Dennis Hopper), some are kitsch (seductive Bette Midler festooned with roses). A few are symbolical, such as the one of ferocious, body-painted Keith Haring looking like one of his own artistic creations. Snaps of John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Rickie Lee Jones will please rock fans. Vistas like Highway 101, California or the glimpse of Nixon leaving the White House by helicopter after his resignation seem to define a time and place. Star photographer of Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and numerous other magazines since the Seventies, Leibovitz here offers a retrospective that shows how far she has come. The early photographs have a documentary feel, even recalling Evans's Depression-era photography or Arbus's sense of the grotesque. They can seem cluttered, but in fact present the right amount of information without feeling posed. The later photographs are cleaner, clearer, and often in color.