London to host new portraits by Annie Leibovitz
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Version 0 of 1. A pop-up exhibition of new portraits of women by the renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz will open in London in January, and travel around the world throughout 2016 to places including Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mexico, Istanbul and New York. The exhibition, the largest touring show mounted by the financial services company UBS, will be open to the public for free, but the undisclosed venues will not be in museums or art galleries: the sites are being chosen, the organisers say, “for the possibilities they offer for original and unexpected encounters”. The portraits, which Leibovitz is still working on, build on one of her most famous projects – Women – an exhibition and book of portraits created 15 years ago in collaboration with the author Susan Sontag. The two women had a long relationship until Sontag’s death in 2004, and Leibovitz documented her last months in tender portraits. Leibovitz says she wants the new portraits to reflect the changes in the roles of women today. The works will become part of the extensive UBS contemporary art collection. Designated a “living legend” by the Library of Congress, Leibovitz has been one of the most celebrated and collected photographers since her portraits – often witty and highly theatrical – first began appearing in Rolling Stone in the early 1970s. Her career has often been marked by controversy. The BBC had to apologise in 2007 after a documentary was edited so that it appeared to show the Queen stalking out of a photoshoot with Leibovitz after a disagreement over whether she should wear her tiara or not. In 2008 she photographed Miley Cyrus for Vanity Fair, with the then 15-year-old actor and singer apparently naked apart from a bedsheet. Cyrus, better known now for her much more revealing Wrecking Ball video, later said the photographs embarrassed her. Leibovitz described the image as “a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little make-up”. |