Posted on 08/23/2009 9:09:22 AM PDT by OldCorps
Annie Leibovitz is as famous as the people she photographs but now the genius behind the lens is close to financial ruin -- a victim, some say, of her own relentless artistic ambition. Among the qualities making Leibovitz, 59, the most sought after portrait photographer in the world are legendary perfectionism and the pouring of resources into lavish sets. Over the course of her long career, nothing has been too extreme in Leibovitz's pursuit of the perfect picture. She put former action icon and current California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on top of a mountain, submerged black actress Whoopi Goldberg in a bath of milk and closed France's Versailles palace to shoot Kirsten Dunst posing as Marie-Antoinette. Circus animals, fire, airplanes -- she was rarely denied a requested prop, however seemingly outrageous.
A debt is due September 8 and if she can't pay up, she could lose her life's work. ACG, which specializes in making loans to owners of high value art works, is unlikely to adopt a soft line. Leibovitz must "comply with the sales agreement she signed authorizing Art Capital to sell the fine art and real estate assets and to pay the invoices that are due," ACG spokesman Montieth Illingworth said in a statement. The over-leveraged photographer not only risks losing her photo archives, which The New York Times estimates could be worth 50 million dollars, but also her house in the trendy Greenwich Village district of Manhattan and a second home outside the city. If she is forced to declare bankruptcy, it will then be up to the courts to decide how to distribute the assets. Banking giant Goldman Sachs entered the fray this week with a claim to own part of Leibovitz's debt. ACG disputes that, but says Goldman Sachs could ...
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9SPdh4Nzy4&feature=channel_page
Is it too late to vote for the white guy?
Yes, but not to late to get a job and work hard . . . which isn’t going to happen to the socialist minded who just want things “changed around.”
S-L-O-W.....N-E-W-S..... D-A-Y
Who is the taxidermist?
She pawned it last year to the high end pawn broker Art Capital Group. They will sell it to recoup their loan. So she has lost it all already.
I am somewhat sympathetic to her. Yes, she should have learned how to run a business, or gotten someone that did to be a partner, but I do have sympathy for an artist who built up a lifetime of work and then is losing it. It isn't just jet skis or a BMW that she has lost.
I agree she does very good work.
There should be no problem selling some of her work and getting her money problems solved.
I think you must have transposed your numbers. I’m sure you meant the odds are 97%. The 3% being that perhaps she was not feeling well that day and didn’t make to the polls.
The original article was when she took out the loan, using her portfolio as collateral. This article is about the loan coming due, and losing her collateral.
BTW, the stuff about her financial problems being due to her professionalism and extravagant sets is all hype. The people commissioning the shots pay for that, or should have. She had several homes, none in the low rent district, and lived a pretty extravagant life for a photographer. There’s not THAT much money in the business. She was also part of the Arts and Sausages crowd and commanded top dollar for her trade.
I suspect that her lesbian lover, Susan Sontag, probably handled the finances. Sontag died in 2005, so four years is about long enough for the financial train wreck to hit.
Combine that with the current recession, where magazines are no longer willing to pay five figures for a cover, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Her pics are only worth what someone will pay for them. I seriously doubt in the current recession that anyone would buy them at less than a fire sale price, particularly since they know she’s in financial straits.
Maybe a Spielberg would bail her out, but she’d still lose control of the photos.
I always thought she was overrated. She wasn’t Cecil Beaton!
Well she can get some of her rich friends to put her up.
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Singer Sheryl Crow agreed to sell the rights to songs including “All I Wanna Do” to an affiliate of Australia’s second-largest bank, as investors continue to snap up music royalties. [for about ten million bucks]
Crow sold her music publishing catalog to First State Media Group Ltd., which is 50 percent-owned by Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Geordie Manolas, managing director of Dublin-based First State Media, said today.
Banks, pension funds and private-equity firms are buying music publishing rights that generate income every time a song is played in stores, advertisements or movies. First State Media’s deal with Crow includes her next two albums, as well as her catalog of songs such as “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Soak Up the Sun.”
Singer Sheryl Crow Sells Music Publishing Catalog
A liberal destroyed by the Obama/democrat mega-recession.
Seriously, who gives a rat’s patootie?
I have no sympathy or empathy for people like her, Michael Jackson or others who it it big in the lottery of life and then pee it all away.
She made her bones in Rolling Stone back in the days when LSD was legal and crazy lefties weren’t running the country.
I imagine her onlycomplaint about Obama is that he isn’t far enough to the left of Lenin (and I don’t mean John).
You mean her lesbian lover didn’t leave her millions?
AAAAAAWWWWWWWWWW
"Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses?
I think Scrooge had an answer.
My give-a-damn appears to be busted.
Anna Wintour, the equally famous editor of Vogue magazine, said in a documentary that Leibovitz was priceless. "Budget is not something that enters into her consciousness, but it is worth it because at the end of the day, she gives you an image that nobody else can," said Wintour.
I'm sure that Wintour and some of Annie's other Greenwich Village elitist friends can pass the hat and bail out their gal pal. Otherwise she can go pound sand as far as I'm concerned.
Those assets are not readily obtainable on demand, and she has to pay up by September... so she could lose everything. Her best bet would be to file BK.
A second-rate undertaker could make Keith Richards look better. Couldn’t make him look like he’s still alive, but could make him look better.
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