アメリカ人女流写真家、アニー・リーボヴィッツをご存知ですか？ジョン・レノンが裸でオノ・ヨーコと横たわっている写真と聞けば、ピンとくる方も多いのでは。弱冠20歳の頃、70年代からローリング・ストーンズ誌においてロック・ミュージシャンを撮り始めたアニーは、83年にファッション誌「ヴァニティー・フェア」の表紙、さらに93年からはヴォーグ誌の撮影も担当。俳優や作家、政治家、スポーツ選手など数多くの著名人を撮り続け、表紙を独創的に飾っています。
そんな彼女の、写真への想いが綴られた「アニー・リーボヴィッツ・アト・ワーク」という本が、2008年末に出版されました。
まず序説には、意訳すると次のような文章が書かれていました。「サンフランシスコ芸術大学では絵画を専攻していました。夏休みにフィリピンの米国空軍に勤める父親を訪ね、近国の日本へ家族旅行に行きました。その旅路で、生涯初のカメラとなる『ミノルタSRT101』を購入したのが写真の道へ入るきっかけとなりました。カメラを持って最初にした事は、富士山への挑戦。その山登りで、カメラに対する尊敬の念を抱きました。このカメラで生きて行くとしたら、それが何を意味するのか、カメラ無くして写真は存在しない。富士山を登り、大自然と向き合う中で、カメラと生きて行く自分の姿を見たように思います。」
その後、抽象的な絵画から現実的な写真へと学科を変更した彼女は、「学校では、テクニックなんて学ばなかった。大切なのは、どうやって見るか、という事だって」と語っています。ローリング・ストーン誌でミュージシャンを撮っていた頃は、こう振り返っています。「何を撮るかっていう対象物（ミュージシャン）が問題ではないの、重要なのは"写真"なのよ」
ニューヨーク在住のアニーの作品は、世界中の美術館やギャラリーで展示され、写真集も出版されています。それらを通して、彼女の語る「写真哲学」に触れてみませんか？
Annie Leibovitz is a well known female photographer in the United States. You might recognize one of her famous photographs of a naked John Lennon embracing Yoko Ono which was shot for the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
She started taking photographs of rock musicians for Rolling Stone magazine in the 70's when she was only 20 years old. She has been photographing for Vanity Fair magazine since 1983, and for Vogue magazine since 1993.
She describes her relationship to photography and the creative process in her recently published book, "Annie Leibovitz At Work". Here is a quote from the prologue:
"I was a third -year student at the San Francisco Art Institute when my pictures began appearing in Rolling Stone. I had enrolled there as a painting major in the fall of 1967. My father was by then stationed in the Philippines, at Clark Air Base, the largest American military base overseas. It was the main support base for soldiers coming in and out of Vietnam. During the summer after my freshman year, while I was staying with my family at the base, I visited Japan with my mother and some of my brothers and sisters. I bought my first real camera in Japan, a Minolta SR-T 101. The first thing I did with it was take it on a clime up Mt.Fuji.
Climbing Mt.Fuji is something very Japanese does at some point, but it's harder than you might think. I was young, and I started up the mountain fast. I didn't konw about pacing. My brother Phil was even? younger - he was thirteen - and he ran ahead of me. Phil disappeared. The camera felt like it weighted a ton. It was awkward. It got heavier the higher we went. After a while I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it, but just then a group of elderly Japanese women in dark robes came marching along in single file. They were chanting in an encouraging way and I fell in behind them. We passed Phil at the seventh way station. He was lying flat on his back.
When you climb Mt. Fuji you stay overnight at the eighth weigh station and get up in the morning so that you can reach the top at sunrise. It's a glorious moment. Spiritually significant. When I got to the top I realized that the film situation. I photographed the sunrise with the two or three frames I had left.
I took this, my first experience with a camera on the road, or path, as a lesson in determination and moderation, although it would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There weren't going to be any pictures without it."
After returning from the trip, she changed her major from painting to photography. She said?in the book that she wasn't ready for abstraction and wanted reality. She recalls what she leaned at school: "We were taught that the most important thing a young photographer can do is learn how to see. It wasn't about the equipment we were using. I don't remember being taught any technique."
Looking back on her days photographing musicians for Rolling Stone magazine, she says that the subject was inconsequential; the "photograph" was what mattered most.
Annie, the New Yorker, has exhibited in museums all over the world and has multiple photography books to her name. So you see, the Gospel according to Annie Liebovitz is only a heartbeat away for anyone who is interested.