Marina Abramović and James Franco on the front and back of Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005–2016

 

The performance artist Marina Abramović and the actor, writer, and artist James Franco are friends and collaborators. In 2010, when Abramović spent seventy-seven days sitting immobile for eight to ten hours in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Franco was one of the hundreds of spectators who sat across from her, one at a time. Two years later, she covered him in honey and gold leaf, in homage to Joseph Beuys’ How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare.

Annie Leibovitz’s portraits of Abramovic and Franco appear on the cover of the forthcoming Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016, the third volume in a series that began over twenty-five years ago with Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, 1970–1990 and includes the bestselling A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005. The new volume is a collection of recent portraits of the people who shape our culture—visual artists, writers, musicians, directors, comedians, scientists, entrepreneurs, athletes, business leaders, political figures.

Phaidon publishes Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005–2016 on 25 October. To pre-order your copies go here. Watch our cover reveal above and feel free to share it with your friends and colleagues.