Willie Nelson — (c) 2001 by Ann ie Lei bowitz
Arts Life
Intimate Portraits
Annie Leibovitz exhibits her iconic photographs
at Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
FRAN HELLER
Special to the Jewish News
.1 amed portrait photographer Annie
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Willie Nelson, Luck Ranch, Spicewood, Texas: Country music
legend Willie Nelson's craggy profile is a road map of his life,
says photographer Annie Leibovitz.
Leibovitz has photographed an entire uni-
verse, from rock singers, writers and politi-
cians to artists, actors and athletes.
In "American Music," an exhibit at the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland
through Sept. 6, Leibovitz focuses her unique gaze
on the landscape of American music.
The exhibit features more than 60 photographs,
from music icons like Pete Seeger, Aretha Franklin
and Bruce Springsteen to contemporary artists
such as Eminem, Dr. Dre and the Dixie Chicks.
For Leibovitz, who got her start with Rolling
Stone magazine in 1970, it is like coming full cir-
cle. For the viewer, it is the story of American
music, writ large in the faces, musical styles and
souls of the men and women who created it.
Four years ago, Leibovitz, 54, decided to return
to her roots and shoot portraits for a new book
and exhibit of photos of rock, blues, soul, folk,
country and rap artists. The traveling exhibit and
its accompanying book are the result of that
journ y.-
In one photograph, a pensive, gray-bearded Pete
Seeger gazes across the Hudson, his banjo casually
slung over his shoulder. In another portrait, a sexy
and elegant Aretha Franklin looks out from the
sumptuous surroundings of her suburban Detroit
home in Bloomfield Hills. Johnny Cash appears
shrouded in darkness in one of the last pictures
taken of him with his wife, June Carter Cash,
prior to their respective deaths.
These figures are among rock 'n' roll's first gen-
eration, a movement born of the 1950s that
brought marginal musical styles such as folk,
rhythm-and-blues, soul and country to the
American forefront. While these emerging musical
genres sprang from many sources, they all spoke
to the disenfranchised segment of society: African-
Americans and poor whites. Many of Leibovitz's
photographs are of black Americans.
In these memorable pictures, Leibovitz captures
her subjects on their porches, in their cars and at
their churches, thus creating a story about each of
their lives.
Anecdotal audio narratives by Leibovitz add
color and depth to her work.
For example, Leibovitz describes how Seeger has
the following words, unseen in the image, embla-
zoned on his banjo: "This machine surrounds hate
and forces it to surrender." The comment adds
even greater dimension to one of America's earliest
and most notable champions of social justice.
Most of her subjects are uncomfortable being
e
B.B. King, Club Ebony, Indianola, Miss.: Many of Leibovitz's
photographs are of black Americans, whose musical genres
sprang from many sources but all spoke to the disenfranchised
segments of society.
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2004
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photographed, explains Leibovitz. In many of the
images, they look away from the camera, lost in
thought, or in their music — like the introspec-
tive gaze of performer Norah Jones, sitting at her
piano. The black and white photograph mimics
the black and white piano keys.
Leibovitz's compositions defy easy assumptions.
For example, the outrageously tattooed Mike
Ness, a devoted family man, is seen bare-armed in
his car with his adoring wife and children.
Leibovitz spent 13 years as photographer for
Rolling Stone. A number of her photographs revisit
American music icons of old, like blues artist B.B.
King (now in his 70s), Etta James and Willie
Nelson.
Leibovitz calls Nelson's craggy profile a roadmap
of his life, likening his face to an Indian nickel,
and his long hair to Samson.
A straightforward picture of Bruce Springsteen
captures the singer working backstage on a song
list for his show.
One can almost hear the music in these inti-
mate portraits, many of which celebrate music
making, as in the picture of the Mt. Moriah
Missionary Baptist Choir. Four middle-aged
women, cloaked in white, sing with ecstasy as they
celebrate their music and their God.
Rap artist Sean "P. Diddy" Combs recently
starred on Broadway in the revival of Raisin in the
Sun, the 1959 Lorraine Hansberry drama. The
photograph of Combs with his expensive car,
designer clothes and beautiful children (the pic-
ture is taken at his estate in the Hamptons) pro-
vides a stark contrast to Combs' onstage persona
of a black man struggling to lift himself from the
ghetto.
For many black Americans, music was, and
remains, a ladder of escape from poverty,. A pic-
ture of composer Ola Dara and his son, Nas, a rap
star who dropped out of school, was shot from an
urban New York City stoop. Raised by his mother
in the rough-and-tumble housing projects, the
physical gulf between father and son poised on
opposite sides of the stair mirrors their absentee
relationship.
Blues musician Willie Foster, who played with
Muddy Waters' band, came from a sharecropper
family. When he was 8 years old, Foster pumped
water for mules, and earned enough money in
two weeks' time to buy a harmonica in a drug-
store for 25 cents. Plagued with-diabetes, Foster
lost both legs; he is photographed in his wheel-
chair, with his harmonica, his dogs and a well-hid-
den revolver.
For many of these performers, life meant being
on the road, exemplified by the photograph of
country artist George Jones taken on his latest