Years later, in 2001, I was returning to Austin late in the evening. I'd been on assignment for eight days in Maui and I'd taken the family along with me. Our client was gracious enough to book a suite for me and the family and to pay for them to attend and to fly there as well. I had a great, exhausting, typical dot com, over the top shoot for a company that burned out and closed soon after. We were heading home, Ben was about five at the time, and we were ragged from a long layover in Denver.
When we walked back into the house the phone was ringing and I answered it before the machine picked up. It was Annie Leibovitz's first assistant. They were all in town, in a rented studio, and Annie's Profoto flashes either didn't get there in time or they had a malfunction; frankly I don't remember which. At any rate they were calling around to see who they could rent a bunch of Profoto strobes from.
At the time we were still shooting most stuff with medium format Hasselblads and routinely used a couple of 2000 watt second Profoto strobe boxes, a couple of 600 watt second boxes, and we kept a separate store of Profoto mono-lights for smaller shoots. We probably had more Profoto stuff sitting around than anyone else in town and Annie would NOT shoot with anything else.
But her assistant was rude. Really rude. He demanded that I put the whole inventory in my car and rush it all over to South Congress Ave. to the rental studio RIGHT NOW. I told him I'd be happy to rent the gear to the production but they'd need to send someone over to pick it up. He told me that was NOT the way it worked and I should, "get my gear and my ass in my car and get moving because.....Annie was waiting."
I gave him simple and direct advice. I told him to fuck off. Then I hung up the phone. They called back but I didn't answer. And because of that one person's bad attitude I harbored negative feelings about Annie Leibovitz for quite some time (my problem, for sure). But that didn't stop me, even for a second, from deeply admiring her work, buying her books, and keeping up with her progress as an artist.
I have collected all of the books of photographs she's put out but I missed buying the one I have pictured above because it's not really a collection of photographs, it's a writer's book about the what and why of her work and not a portable gallery of greatest hits. I didn't think I would learn anything from a "how to" book about A.L. that I hadn't already read or seen in print in various places.
Recently I had a change of heart. I'd just re-read Susan Sontag's book, "On Photography" and it piqued my interest once again in Ms. Leibovitz. When I saw the book at a local bookstore I decided to give it a go and brought it home. Funny thing; I let it sit on my desk for two weeks before I pulled off the protective plastic wrap and sat down to have a look and a read.
I'm so glad I did because it's the first time I feel a kinship, or a sense of universal, photographer alignment with A.L. The book is a series of stories about how she came to be in each different photographic scenario and about her thought processes in setting up certain shots, and cajoling celebrities into doing crazy stuff which, in turn, is the stuff of some of the great American photographs of the 1980's, 1990's, and the 2000's.
Don't be a literal, photo-geek and buy this book hoping to find lighting diagrams or gear lists; they are NOT in this book. Don't buy it hoping that you'll find Joe-McNally-Like self aggrandizing stories about cobbling together 250 $600 flashes in order to shot a bad shot in a desert which could have been done with one Elinchrom Ranger flash......You won't find much technical information at all. Actually, close to zero...
The book is a narrative about the artistic process from Annie Leibovitz's point of view. Stories about working alongside people like: Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Keith Haring, and various movie actors. How did the idea come about to photograph the Blues Brothers in blue face? How did the idea come about to photograph Whoopie Goldberg in a bathtub filled with milk? And more, and more, and more.
So, these are the kinds of books I hear most photographer say they'd really like to see when they've arrived here, mentally battered, after some tenure at DPReview. As an antidote to the compulsion to reduce the secret of all photography, and success in image making, to a catalog of gear. The antidote for yet another recitation of the merits of various, cheap Chinese flash triggers. The prescription for one burned out on reviews of.....wait for it......the best camera straps.
Don't buy this book thinking that "Annie" is going to teach you how to light wannabe fashion models with your Godox flash. Instead, embrace the book if you want to understand the yet unfinished arc of one of the great photographers of our time, and what she brings to her work BESIDES cameras, lenses and other material.
I sat down with the book this afternoon and read it pretty much straight through. I'll probably read it again tomorrow. Will it teach me to do photography better? No. Will it teach me to be a better photographer? Well, it actually might.
I liked the book a lot. I'm glad to have let go of my negative feelings about a fellow artist and to have taken the plunge into one part of her thought process. You are probably way ahead of me there.....
12 comments:
Lovely story Kirk. Pity assistants have to live up to their first three letters :)
My wife bought me the book a few years ago and I really enjoyed it. I also watched her master class which surprisingly is also not much to do with gear.
All the best!
Classic story about the assistant. Got a good laugh from your reaction and attitude. And I ordered the book.
Annie's assistant is the perfect example of New York rude and entitled.
Your list of antidotes could also include camera bags, lens hoods, and protective lens filters.
It reminded me of a David Allan Coe song,
"You Never Even Called Me by My Name", in which he tells about song writer Steve Goodman claiming to have written the perfect country song. Coe disagreed because such country staples as prison, trains, and trucks weren't mentioned. Goodman wrote another verse and Coe agreed. More here: https://www.wideopencountry.com/story-behind-david-allan-coes-never-even-called-name/
I do not normally (if at all) bump heads with the famous. But one evening back in the 70's I wandered into a basement rock club in Boston. Folks like the Police and the Cars played this place before the became big. Big shot rockers might wander in after playing locally. Well sitting at the bar was Mr. Costello himself. I did walk up say and hi. He was kind enough to ask why my arm was in a sling at the time. Nice guy he was.
Annie Leibowitz has visited our town a few times on assignment and usually stayed at a local inn that is often used for fashion shoots. I knew the owner (he has since sold it) and he said that she was very hard on her assistants. This was later confirmed to me by a local person who had assisted on the set. I think possibly this gets transmitted to others via her assistants who, in turn, are not behaving at their best.
I take a somewhat different view as while I do think it is not good to treat anyone poorly, I can understand a person who has gotten to her position in life by working harder than most and demands a lot from her assistants that, to an outside observer may look like abuse but in fact is a language they all understand. I can also attest to the pressure on set from the client and the pressure we place on ourselves to make sure that we live up to whatever expectations they may have of us. The shoot she is on will most likely represent a revenue that exceeds the annual income of the average photographer in America.
I will make a point of taking a look at this book as it sounds precisely the sort of read I ma looking for.
Why the animosity towards Joe M, Mr Tuck? He seems a hard - working regular guy, at least to someone who only knows him from his videos.
I got this book a while back as a Christmas present. I wasn't sure what to expect. A lot of the fairly recent overly processed work I saw published with her name on it had turned me off on her, but the book was a nice antidote. Her insistence on Profotos would seem to contradict a lot of the gear independence she discusses the book. Maybe that was her assistant again.
Patrick, the Nikon merchandizing was just over the top and it seems that everything Joe does publicly is aimed at selling somebody's products. Sometimes the push to showcase products leads him to couch lighting and photography in a way that's counterproductive to people new to the craft. Example: Buy a ton of expensive speed lights instead of some well chosen other lighting gear. His 2006-2010 shilling for Nikon was just....over the top.
Excellent post.
The relationship of artists and craftsmen to their gear has always interested me, because it's so complicated. At the higher ends of any kind of art, it's the idea that's critical -- but there's an assumption that the gear is mastered, which isn't always true with some particular people. Other people (engineering minds, I call them) seem to assume that a mastery of gear equals art, which it does not. Every once in a while, with really good, mmm...performers, I guess you'd say, because it's all arts, not just photography...I'm sometimes struck by a work and I wonder how the artist even thought of it. That's why books like Leibovitz's are so compelling. You're really not talking about production or how many pixels you need for the Internet, you're talking about the process of arriving at an art work.
As for her assistant being something of an asshole, if I might use the word...I've found that assistants often are. I think there might be an element of frustration there, the belief that *they* should be important, rather than borrowing the importance of their employer. As a former newspaper reporter, I saw it a lot, and often wondered if the assistant is actually a screen that the employer is fully aware of, so that he/she can be more friendly than he might actually be inclined to be. He can be the good guy. You've spoken here of working with one of the former President Bushes, and found him to be quite affable. But I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that he had more than one asshole assistant back in the weeds. 8-)
JC
I bought this book a few years ago, very interesting. And the...surprising thing I read is that Annie's first camera was a Minolta SRT 101 which was also my first serious camera.
Of course no special meaning but I like this fact LOL
robert
I held off reading this review until I read the book. Like Kirk I read it quickly (two evenings) and enjoyed it thoroughly. It's not about gear, but it is a little. It's not about lighting, but it is a little. It's not about business, but it is a little.
It's really about the joy, pleasure and fulfillment that comes from learning an art, practicing that art and doing it well for several decades. It's about the people she worked with and those she photographed.
It's about the change we've all experienced over those decades.
Reading this book is time well spent.
For the readers among us: https://www.theobservers.co/books
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