Annie Leibovitz

The American photographer Annie Leibovitz first attracted attention for her work while still a student in the late 1960s. Her photojournalism came to define the style of Rolling Stone magazine, the cult publication of contemporary youth-culture and protest. Throughout the 1970s, Leibovitz's camera documentation of such signal events as the Woodstock Festival and the Vietnam protest rallies provided the classic images of a decade. This film combines an in-depth interview with a survey of Leibovitz's career. It draws on a wide range of material, including early home movies, an extensive sequence of her most compelling images, and commentary from Mick Jagger, Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner and others who have worked with Leibovitz. In the early 1980s she moved to Vanity Fair magazine, where her bold celebrity portraits culminated in the succès de scandale of the 1993 cover photo featuring a nude and pregnant Demi Moore. Leibovitz and her team are shown at work on a subsequent assignment with Demi Moore. These taxing photo-sessions reveal Leibovitz's professional drive and mastery.