Annie Leibovitz Surveys Fashion Work In 'Wonderland' Book: 'I Believe In A Sense Of Place'

Photographer Annie Leibovitz’s fashion portraiture in Vogue may look a world apart from her photojournalism in the heady, rock ‘n’ roll 1970s at Rolling Stone magazine, yet in many ways her approach to an image is unchanged.

“I’m not a studio photographer,” Leibovitz said Tuesday at a Chicago Humanities Festival talk on her new book of fashion photographs, “Annie Leibovitz: Wonderland.”

“I believe in a sense of place and the history of a place.”

Alice In Wonderland, Marie Antoinette — And Ye: For a look at that (expensive) sense of place, take the shoot from which the book derives its name: the 2003 Vogue editorial “Alice in Wonderland.”

It was photographed at a French chateau with two of Leibovitz’s frequent collaborators in fashion: stylist Grace Coddington and model Natalia Vodianova, who played Alice.

In another series of photographs Leibovitz showed to an audience at the Harris Theater, actress Kirsten Dunst modeled at the Palace of Versailles for Leibovitz after playing Marie Antoinette in the Sofia Coppola film of the same name.

The 2006 session marked the first time Versailles was opened for a fashion shoot in 25 years, the photographer said.

For a 2011 picture of actress Charlize Theron near a Pennsylvania waterfall, Leibovitz said her location scout described the walk to the waterfall as a short one.

Instead, the shoot was a remote, dicey affair where her assistants risked electrocution while rigging lights around the water.

“No words,” Leibovitz said, eliciting laughter in the audience.

She showed pictures of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West as examples of more journalistic fashion photos where she embeds with the subjects.

The trend in fashion shifted in the 1990s from models dominating magazine covers to the elevation of celebrities, artists and politicians, Leibovitz said. In 1999, Vogue ran four covers that weren’t models; in 2002, none of the covers were models, she said.

See Also: You Can Buy Shares of This Pablo Picasso Painting From a Series With Strong Historical Appreciation

Leibovitz In 2021: Tuesday’s slideshow ended on a somber note with Leibovitz choking up at an image of late fashion designer and Louis Vuitton artistic director Virgil Abloh, who died of cancer last month at 41.

The Vogue photo of Abloh from 2020 was taken remotely during the coronavirus lockdown, with Abloh and Leibovitz communicating on a Zoom Video ZM call and the photographer controlling the camera remotely.

Masks were required at Tuesday’s event and vaccination cards were checked at the door. The pandemic saw Leibovitz, 72, taking an extended amount of time to work on “Wonderland” at her upstate New York home, she said. 

“Looking back at my work, I see that fashion has always been there.”