Annie Leibovitz (Limited Edition)

SUMO

Annie Leibovitz

Edition of 9,000 + 200 APs

US$ 2,500

Edition

Availability: In Stock

When Benedikt Taschen asked the most important portrait photographer working today to collect her pictures in a SUMO-sized book, she was intrigued and challenged. The project took several years to develop and proved to be revelatory. Annie Leibovitz drew from over 40 years of work, starting with the viscerally intimate reportage she created for Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s and extending through the more stylized portraiture of her work for Vanity Fair and Vogue. Celebrated images such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono entwined in a last embrace are printed alongside portraits that have rarely, and sometimes never before, been seen. Annie Leibovitz was able to present some of her famous group portraits in a format that proves that she is the master of the genre. Her pictures are at once intimate and iconic, wide-ranging stylistically and also uniquely hers. Annie Leibovitz is often imitated, particularly by younger photographers, but her work is somehow immediately recognizable.

The bookends of the Leibovitz collection are the black-and-white photograph of Richard Nixon’s helicopter lifting off from the White House lawn after he resigned as president in 1974 and the formal color portrait of Queen Elizabeth II taken in a drawing room of Buckingham Palace in 2007. In between are portraits that make up a family album of our time: actors, dancers, comedians, musicians, artists, writers, performance artists, journalists, athletes, businesspeople. Performance and power are recurring themes. A supplementary book contains essays by Annie Leibovitz, Graydon Carter, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Paul Roth and short texts describing the subjects of each of the over 250 photographs.

The Collector’s Edition is available in four different covers:

Whoopi Goldberg, Berkeley, California, 1984
Keith Haring, New York City, 1986
David Byrne, Los Angeles, 1986
Patti Smith, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1978

Limited to a total of 10,000 signed and numbered copies, this book is available as Collector’s Edition (No. 1,001–10,000) and also as Art Edition (No. 1–1,000) with a fine art print, signed by Annie Leibovitz, and the full set of all four covers.

Both editions come with a tripod book stand designed by Marc Newson.

Contributors

The photographer

Annie Leibovitz is considered one of the world’s best portrait photographers. She first developed her trademark use of bold colors and poses at Rolling Stone, where she worked as chief photographer for ten years from 1973. Her numerous covers included the iconic shot of a nude John Lennon, curled up beside Yoko Ono. In 1983, Leibovitz joined the staff at Vanity Fair, and in 1998 began regular work for Vogue. Leibovitz shot the Pirelli Calendar for 2000 and 2016, making a drastic shift in the 2016 calendar to celebrate a diverse group of creative women, most of them shot fully clothed.

Leibovitz’s extraordinary repertoire of subjects includes Barack Obama, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Whoopi Goldberg, Gisele Bündchen, LeBron James, and a pregnant Demi Moore. Leibovitz’s photographs have appeared at museums and galleries around the world, including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the International Center of Photography in New York, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. Leibovitz has been designated a Living Legend by the Library of Congress and is the recipient of many other honors, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography.

The authors

Steve Martin is a celebrated comedian, actor, writer, and musician. In 2010, he published the novel An Object of Beauty.

Graydon Carter has been the editor of Vanity Fair since 1992.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is the co-director of exhibitions and programmes and director of international projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Paul Roth is the director of the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto.

Details

“More an art installation than a coffee-table tome.”

— Sotheby’s In Residence, Dubai
“If a library were a game of Happy Families, this book would be the wild joker… And because it is more a sculpture than a book, it comes with its own little table. Annie Leibovitz is something like the photographer’s triumph.”

— Die Welt, Berlin
“Intimate and sublime.”

— Madame Figaro, Paris
“A limited edition and weighty affair, it’s a beautiful object in itself…a design statement in your living room.”

— The Daily Telegraph (Luxury Supplement), London
“Precise composition, perfect framing, subtle colors and celebrated actors… A meticulously assembled volume.”

— Efe Agency, Madrid
“Cool attitude: an American aesthetic… Annie Leibovitz displays almost to excess the commercial identity of cool in this Sumo volume, which weighs a good twenty kilos. The work itself is of magnificent craftsmanship and follows a clear economic logic. Since the book market is increasingly constrained, TASCHEN is producing more expensive collectors’ editions printed in small runs and guaranteed to gain in value from day one. The 500 large-format (50 x 70 cm) pages only intensify the intrinsic qualities of Leibovitzs’ cool: a taste for stagey settings, for power, glamour, success, flamboyance and the intimate and private laid before the public.”

— L’Hebdo, Lausanne
“A fantastic portrait of our time.”

— Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich
“Leibovitz has just published an extraordinary new book of her photographs from TASCHEN… I guarantee that it will sell out quickly from New York’s Upper East Side to Beverly Hills to Chicago, Dallas, and San Francisco… The pictures are sumptuous, iconic, and historic.”

— www.showbiz411.com, Los Angeles
“This book will make her immortal: Annie Leibovitz has made a selection of her best works for publication – in the mighty SUMO format… The volume, published by TASCHEN, is more than a book, it is a universe, with its very own perspective.”

— Berliner Morgenpost, Berlin
“Printed in Germany, bound in Italy, the book’s international production fits its contents, which are nothing less than 40 years’ worth of classic and iconic photography… reproduced with breathtaking clarity, texture, and vividness, the colors and subjects practically leaping off the page.”

— Vanityfair.com, Los Angeles