Annie Leibovitz
[Photographer, b. 1949, Westbury, Connecticut, lives in New York.]
I’m pretty used to people not liking having their picture taken. I mean, if you do like to have your picture taken, I worry about you.
People buy ideas, they don’t buy photographs.
If I didn’t have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.
...I gave up on being a journalist—I thought having a point of view was more important than being objective.
There is a myth that the portrait photographer is supposed to make the subject relax, and that’s the real person. But I’m interested in
whatever is going on. And I’m not that comfortable myself.
I don’t try to overintellectualize my concepts of people. In fact, the ideas I have, if you talk about them, they seem extremely corny and it’s only in their execution that people can enjoy them... It’s something I’ve learned to trust: The stupider it is, the better it looks.
I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.
One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time.
