Meeting the Divine Ms. Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz with yours truly

“Now when I take a picture, I can tell if I feel the pilgrimage in it. A rawness. A simplicity. I’ve gotten down to what matters.”–Annie Leibovitz.

It’s not every day that a show comes to your sleepy little hometown and wakes you up.

Last night, my husband, Jay and I got to meet the super fun, down-to-earth, and a photographer that I have admired for years: Annie Leibovitz.

Her show “Pilgrimage,” which will be making the rounds (somewhere, hopefully near you), premiered in our humble town of Concord, Massachusetts.  With photographs she has taken of famous historical landmarks, including the homes of notables like Elvis, Georgia O’Keefe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, this exhibit is a complete departure from the Vanity Fair covers for which she is widely known.

TV that Elvis shot (in a storage room at Graceland)

It is not the whole house you see so much as a nook and cranny, a cluttered storage room (yes, even artists like Martha Graham had stuff!), or an object that tells a story like the one of a broken TV set with a caption that reads “Sometime in the 1970s Elvis shot out the TV in his house in Palm Springs. It is now in a storage room at Graceland.”

 

Yes, I’d say that the show, and meeting this legendary woman was a blast in more ways than one! If for no other reason than she’s real. And fun.

Annie working it

 

What inspired Leibovitz to take these pictures? Why are there no people in them? What does pilgrimage as a spiritual journey mean to her?

The answers and more in this New York Times article

…and in this terrific interview in the Boston Globe

Photos of Annie (and her photos) by: Stephanie Bennett Vogt