and the RATS, take another one in the..............................HA ha!!!
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 ...
That is way too funny. Watch this video everybody.
I would not need any props or sets to capture Leibovitz’ s irrelevant self,
I could do it with a brownie camera.
A photo which is perhaps the most vile, ugly, intentionally staged photos eched or rather scarred in my memory.
Sounds as if she has sufficient assests as a result of her labor to cover her debts.
OK. Now I get it. Bush's fault.
Jeez, I guess we can add Keith Richards to that list of "things that will survive following a nuclear holocaust".
Some victim.
Why is there a stupid article about Leibovitz on Drudge, but not a video of the brave Marine telling off his congressman?
I appreciate your points, but both approaches are legitimate portraiture. I’m a big fan of White, and Liebowitz does some excellent work, although she trends far more towards the Maplethorpe/decadent genre than I am comfortable with. The Whoopie pictures are grotesque, but memorable.
There are several problems with Art from around 1950 on. It’s based as much on being distinctive as it is being good.
White worked with available lighting and figures and happenings of actual historical significance. She was an early master in photographic composition, and put herself in significant danger to get her shots.
Liebowitz is a good photographer, but her subjects tend to be the glitterati of the moment, although she has done some notable figures. Her work is more baroque and decorative than White’s. White always kept a photo-journalistic tempo to her photos. Liebowitz seems more like a painter making a composition. It’s more formal and staged, but the lighting is perfect, and there are decorative touches all over the place.
I previously read an article that said she owned several homes, not just two. I guess she inherited them from Sontag when she died, and was required to pay estate taxes on them. I’ve never heard of her ever selling, or attempting to sell any of them to help pay the taxes.
thanks, bfl
The only place that Annie is getting beat up worse than FreeRepublic is her own lesbian, liberal,artsy-fartsy crowd.
They love,worship and revel in everyone’s failure(while preaching the opposite) but when it is actually one of their own, it becomes a near orgasmic experience.
<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.
Damn. Sadly, it appears that like many artists, she found the business end to be beneath her or not worth worrying about. As Warhol said, “Art is business.” Artists who do not live by those words, may well die by them in poverty.
I have a sister who is an opera singer. You would be surprised how many of these singers have no control of their finances and no ability to put money aside so that they have a cushion between jobs.
She’s also known as one of the most unpleasant people in the photography world.
Too bad she cant sell ugly - she would be a millionaire.
I agree. Any competent portrait photographer who had the best equipment and access to celebrities could have taken pictures of equal or better quality. In my opinion, Leibovitz' use of props is excessive and sometimes ridiculous. In fact, they are more like crutches. The face of a great man should speak for itself. Perhaps that says says something about her subjects: Most of them are not great--They're just famous.
Leibowitz was a studio portraitist fulfilling commercial assignments, a whole different line of work technically. Studio portraiture requires sets, lighting, a staff of assistants, advance and follow-up work, extensive interaction with agents, clients and publication photo editors, remote location and prop rentals, continuous equipment and software upgrades and archiving systems. Her approach was closer to producing a feature-length movie than snapping a Brownie. A business on her scale would require substantial overhead and cash flow, even if she hadn't gone overboard.
I’m sure I’ll get flamed for this, but who gives a rat’s:
Photography is not art. It is a mechanical means of capturing an image.
Now, some of the manipulations that are done with Photoshop to the photos certainly have some artistic value to them, but taking a picture of someone ain’t the same as taking a blank canvas/paper and creating an image...flame away...
Wikipedia said that Sontag's son was her executor, and that she only left Leibowitz some "sentimental items", and that Leibowitz was not mentioned in Sontag's NYT obituary. Maybe she has been going through a depression and lost sight of her cash flow.
Well, she did photograph Reagan and Bush, but mostly she photographed fame and pop culture. That said, she was at the top of that game for a long while.
This article gives more details, including criticisms of her recent work.
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