‘You know, I can’t really say I’ve had much of a life outside of photography. I mean, I think I lived inside my pictures. And I was very young when I started this when I was 20. It was certainly a lot of fun, you know, to be like, you know, not knowing when to go home, more or less. But I just went from one picture to the next……
I like to combine ambient light with strobe. And I do it a lot, I find that it sort of allows my background to become seamless, in a way, and very, very flat. And the picture itself almost becomes almost one dimensional. By lighting this subject in the foreground, I find that I can pop them, they pop forward, and then I leave the camera open to get the background. In other words, it’s a long exposure. So short exposure on the foreground on your subject, and then the camera stays open for the background.
The way I approached photographing John and Yoko for the cover of Rolling Stone was that they had been together for over 12 years. And that was the story so that I wanted both of them together and in embrace. And that picture was taken the afternoon that he was killed that night. He was shot that night. And John, you know, he didn’t know the idea till I got there in the morning. And he got right into it. He said no problem, you know, and that was John, you know, he was willing to go to extremes, you know, to express his point. And so, he was, he was killed that night, he saw the Polaroids he loved the Polaroids. He thought it really expressed his relationship with Yoko.
So when he was killed that night, I pulled myself together the next morning and went into Rolling Stone and they were already mocking up a cover for just his face on the cover. And I said no way you know, this is John Lennon. This is the way it’s going to be so we ran the shot of him naked I thought it was very brave of Rolling Stone to do that.
I want to continue my portrait work, but I want to start getting away from all the lights and the caring assistants and I plan to do some 35 millimeter work, you know, just out in the field as they say going off for two or three weeks at a time. Possibly some work for geo magazine.
It’s really, it’s a big responsibility when you’re carrying yourself and an assistant and the shooting seems to be turning into big productions. And as much as I try to simplify them, it doesn’t. You think, well, if you have an assistant there and you have like a strobe, you might as well have this and you might as well have that. And that’s true. I mean, the only other way to do it is like not have anything with you except you know, your camera. And, and anyone who takes pictures knows that that’s hard enough to carry around, so I plan to go off and do things you’ve never seen before.’
Annie Leibovitz sometime between 1980-1983
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