Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/01/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]My wife and I watched it last night. We liked it a lot. We're in the same age group as Annie, so had a strong appreciation of the arc of her career, age-wise Interesting to see her with the M7 and Motor Winder following (and often directing) Barishnikov around the dance floor. Also observed that she goes back to the M from time to time for personal or more intimate settings; Sonnetag's dying days, children, Sarajevo, etc. SIDEBAR (some actual current Leibovitz content, so stay with me, here): A commercial photog on the same flight back from Phoenix with my wife and I last week commented on my plain brown canvas Domke bag, in which most of my R gear was stashed (R9, Motor Drive, 28-90, 70-180, Metz flash, Ergo Rest plus my T2). He remarked, "you must be a Lieca shooter - they all carry Domkes". For some reason I was offended. Bag Stereotyping? In fact I thought he was alluding to M users, who I used to stereotype as using nothing but Billingham (I lusted after their Storm bag - don't get me wrong). But, let's face it; he was 30-something and maybe he learned that in a class. Fact is, we all use whatever we end up with. I have 3 different bags, all different brands. So we start talking in the terminal, sort of a truncated dialog as we rush to seperate connecting flights. I manage to get out of him that he's on assignment, and in the big photo back pack is an RZ kit he shoots with. In parting, he told me a short story about a family member needing an M8 for their daughter's (graduation? assignment? couldn't hear that too well in the hubub of the terminal. The kicker was they couldn't find an M8 for sale anywhere in NYC, ended up somehow getting Annie's M8. Did Annie sell it through her agent? Did she give it to them? A loaner for a friend's kid? Was she sick of her M8? I don't know. For that matter, did the guy on the plane make this whole story up? All I did was carry on an old rat brown canvas photo bag. Small world. Strange, but small. Bob in Seattle On Jan 3, 2007, at 23:41, Peter Klein wrote: I just watched it. Thought it was, on the whole, a very well-done film. It followed her evolution through the years, from edgy rock chronicler to glam celebrity imager. It didn't flinch from presenting not-so-rosy views about the celebrity culture she photographs, though it was (unavoidably) a bit infected with that culture's viewpoint itself. Plus, it was a really great ride back through the 60s rock scene. The notorious "On Photography" of Susan Sontag (written before they met) was mentioned briefly, but not how controversial it is among photographers. No mention was made of Sontag's second photography tome. I wonder if/how Sontag's about-face in the second piece was influenced by her relationship with Liebovitz and observation of her working. I have to say that I prefer much of Liebovitz' earlier work for Rolling Stone to the heavily staged, "cue the elephants" later stuff. When they discussed the John Lennon naked / Yoko Ono clothed photo taken hours before his shooting, I thought back to Margaret Bourke-White's last photo of Ghandi at the spinning wheel. Oh, and to be on topic, the film showed her photographing Mikhail Baryshnikov and her kids with what appeared to be a motorized M6. Other subjects were shot with the usual SLRs and some medium format gear. --Peter _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information