Her Majesty, cover girl de jour;
I'm hanging out for a bigger one of the cover!
I'm hanging out for a bigger one of the cover!
The queen of photography: Why the stars always come out for Annie Leibovitz
The 'Vanity Fair' photographer's portraits have divided the critics. David Usborne focuses on the woman behind the lens
Published: 06 May 2007
Mutterings of disappointment may have risen from Buckingham Palace last week as Queen Elizabeth II packed for her hullaballooed state visit to the United States. She had sat for that famous photographer from Vanity Fair - what was her name, Annie Leibovitz? - and she hadn't even made the magazine's cover. They will, no doubt, be gratified to see that this foolish error has been corrected on the front of the UK edition.
We have all seen one of the images of Her Majesty taken by Leibovitz, assisted by a team of flitting assistants, during a session in the White Drawing Room in March. And we know how it has divided the critics. "All the personality of a marble bust of George Washington," said one. But there are more, splashed across inside pages of June's Vanity Fair, where Leibovitz has been chief photographer since 1983.
That the palace should have turned to Leibovitz is understandable. She is surely the pre-eminent photo-portraitist of America's rich and famous. (The Queen is in America and certainly meets the other criteria.) But arguably it also reduces her to just another Hollywood commodity, alongside the likes of Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise and David Beckham, all recent targets of Leibovitz's lens.
How galling, then, to discover that, in the American edition at least, it is a dust-blown Willis and his motorcycle who benefit from the front-page treatment. Her Majesty just gets a brief blurb on the cover - "Queen Elizabeth sits for Annie Leibovitz" - just to the left of the actor's scuffed left knee. But if she wants to be part of today's celebrity contest, she had better get used to the competition.
Her transition to Hollywood was, of course, prepared by her celluloid imitator, Helen Mirren. Now it is almost as if Her Majesty felt compelled to remind the citizens of the former colony across the water that Dame Helen was merely an impostor and she, by heaven, is the real thing. Give them some pictures over-blowing her very royalty to the greatest possible degree and the attention will come back to her.
Because that is what Leibovitz, 57, has done. Her mission is not to reveal the hidden frailty or humanity of her subjects - which is what Mirren did in The Queen - but to enhance everything that has made them famous in the first place. She gives them a role, in fact, and pumps up the pixels to create an enhanced reality. Willis is rugged. The Queen is all majesty in her Stewart Parvin gown and Queen Mary tiara.
With some marketing help from her editors at Vanity Fair and at Vogue, she also makes pictures that become popular happenings, a part of her reputation that presumably also appealed to Buckingham Palace. There have been more than 130 portraits - by camera and paintbrush - of Queen Elizabeth II, but these are the ones the public, certainly in America, will probably remember the longest.
The 'Vanity Fair' photographer's portraits have divided the critics. David Usborne focuses on the woman behind the lens
Published: 06 May 2007
Mutterings of disappointment may have risen from Buckingham Palace last week as Queen Elizabeth II packed for her hullaballooed state visit to the United States. She had sat for that famous photographer from Vanity Fair - what was her name, Annie Leibovitz? - and she hadn't even made the magazine's cover. They will, no doubt, be gratified to see that this foolish error has been corrected on the front of the UK edition.
We have all seen one of the images of Her Majesty taken by Leibovitz, assisted by a team of flitting assistants, during a session in the White Drawing Room in March. And we know how it has divided the critics. "All the personality of a marble bust of George Washington," said one. But there are more, splashed across inside pages of June's Vanity Fair, where Leibovitz has been chief photographer since 1983.
That the palace should have turned to Leibovitz is understandable. She is surely the pre-eminent photo-portraitist of America's rich and famous. (The Queen is in America and certainly meets the other criteria.) But arguably it also reduces her to just another Hollywood commodity, alongside the likes of Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise and David Beckham, all recent targets of Leibovitz's lens.
How galling, then, to discover that, in the American edition at least, it is a dust-blown Willis and his motorcycle who benefit from the front-page treatment. Her Majesty just gets a brief blurb on the cover - "Queen Elizabeth sits for Annie Leibovitz" - just to the left of the actor's scuffed left knee. But if she wants to be part of today's celebrity contest, she had better get used to the competition.
Her transition to Hollywood was, of course, prepared by her celluloid imitator, Helen Mirren. Now it is almost as if Her Majesty felt compelled to remind the citizens of the former colony across the water that Dame Helen was merely an impostor and she, by heaven, is the real thing. Give them some pictures over-blowing her very royalty to the greatest possible degree and the attention will come back to her.
Because that is what Leibovitz, 57, has done. Her mission is not to reveal the hidden frailty or humanity of her subjects - which is what Mirren did in The Queen - but to enhance everything that has made them famous in the first place. She gives them a role, in fact, and pumps up the pixels to create an enhanced reality. Willis is rugged. The Queen is all majesty in her Stewart Parvin gown and Queen Mary tiara.
With some marketing help from her editors at Vanity Fair and at Vogue, she also makes pictures that become popular happenings, a part of her reputation that presumably also appealed to Buckingham Palace. There have been more than 130 portraits - by camera and paintbrush - of Queen Elizabeth II, but these are the ones the public, certainly in America, will probably remember the longest.
I love that these photos are set against a dark, brooding sky. It gives the images an almost mysterious, old world feeling.
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