Fashion Neurosis with Annie Leibovitz

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1:24Hi, come in.

1:32Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Annie Leibovitz. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? Well, I knew for sure I was going to wear what I wear almost every single day, which is I have about 10 pairs of these pants and 15 of these shirts that

1:56But I had, I actually had made, I was, we were doing something on the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. And everyone kept saying, oh, you have to have shirts made downstairs. They will make them overnight for you, you know. And so I had, it was just too exciting, the idea of having a shirt made overnight, you know. So literally they made these shirts overnight. and so this one is 20 years old the one I have on it's it's and they get softer and softer there the cotton it's just amazing and so the basic thing that I wear almost every single day and everyone thinks oh she wears black all the time but I'm just wearing it's like it can get dirty and you don't have to worry you know you can spill coffee on it you can you know I mean I am getting a little tired of it now but um and when i had my children i um you know i wanted you know to wear you know colors you know more something more they love color don't they children they yeah they definitely i tried for like two or three years and then i went back to this because it's so i think it really is about um not wanting to feel for me i don't want to feel i don't want anything I don't want to feel I don't want to worry about myself I don't want to be out of myself I don't want to worry about my body I don't want to worry about anything I don't want to worry about it I just and then when you travel and you can just pack five of the same pants and five of the same shirts and then every now and then you have to dress it up a little bit I mean this shirt I have to show you that I wore I wore it especially for you you know Bella because it it's um I'm trying to save it it's like the the sleeve just went on it and the um and the back is is has stitching all in it trying to hold it from falling apart but um you know I love that aspect of it that it gets older and but it really is the pants the pants are based on a Donna Karan pair of pants from the 80s that I had copied by Christine Billing in New York.

4:21And it has Lycra in it. Oh, yeah. And they just, so they move. You know, when you're really photographing, you're almost dancing. And you just don't want to, I just don't want to think about what's on me, you know. That's pretty much. But, you know, then every now and then you meet someone like Daniel Roseberry and you're admiring his corduroy jacket and pants, so beautiful. That's his black pair of pants and black shirt, and he wears it every single day. And he has like, you know, maybe 10 or 20. I mean, anyway, that's what he wears every single day to work. And I said, maybe I could have a new uniform.

5:09And I asked him. Well, he said, I'm going to make you. I'm going to make you, you know, a suit. And it has pants to it. But I've sort of fallen in love with a jacket because I can put it on and I feel a little bit more dressed up or something. It's really nice. And it's great with the dark gray of your shirt and trousers. And it just sort of, the color seems to deep. Because we're black. Yeah, because the deep gray is very good. and it seems to suit you, it's less contrasty and it's more nuanced with the dark burgundy color. I was talking to my daughter, though, who surprised me here in the hotel yesterday.

5:58And she said, wait a minute, Mom, why aren't you wearing your pajamas to Bella's? Because basically that is really the truth. since COVID. I just, when I'm upstate in my place upstate, some days I don't get out of my pajamas. I just love my pajamas. And my children and people know me, give me pajamas for Christmas and for my birthday. And I love pajamas. I love working in pajamas and editing in pajamas. So these are kind of a kind of more glorified version of the pajamas. You mentioned you were wearing a bra today. You have to make pajamas, Bella. I actually did make some for Marks and Spencers just now.

6:48I'll see if I can get some. I'll show you afterwards. Oh my God, I'm excited. Yeah. I'm obsessed with pajamas as well. I know. So how come you're dressed up today? I always need I need something some transition before before working so I I have a ritual of changing slightly out of pajamas otherwise it's too easy to go back to bed which I don't actually like going back to bed but uh but you mentioned that you were wearing a bra today which you said no I know I like I that's the best thing about the pajamas I mean I do you know I have to say sometimes if I go all day long in the pajamas upstate, it's like I'll take a shower and change back into another pair of pajamas.

7:37You know, I can't go to sleep wearing the same. I love clean clothes. Yeah. I'm obsessed with, you know, when I was starting to make a better living, I just love, I have to wear clean clothes every single day. I mean, I love clean clothes. So I could never go back to sleep in the same pajamas that I was wearing. Yeah, I'm the same. Yes, no. No, I was bringing up that I'm not a big fan of, I have to wear a bra, but I don't like wearing bras. You know, I feel like I keep trying to find one and I just need to do a little more research that's more comfortable or something. But I, you know, along with those pajamas, there are no, I don't wear bras.

8:22So yeah, no, I'm like, shall I take the bra off? Not in front of the camera. but no i don't like bras it's like i feel like wait a minute boy i love bras because for ages my breasts were too small to bother with a bra and then they got like a millimeter bigger and i quickly got like a bra it was so exciting you know remind me of school and all these girls and their underwear which i was always intrigued by no i like um i lost some weight so now now the bras are riding up they're like all this one is is riding up you know it's like this it's um anyway it's funny girls being women yeah and your photographer has taken some of the most recognized images in the world and your name is famous but your work is the superstar and Gloria Steinem said, she's the tallest, most authoritative, unsure person that I've ever seen.

9:26And your work is so authoritative. I love that you pulled that out. What are you unsure about? I love Gloria Steinem. I mean, she's just marvelous. I was telling you earlier that I, with this book that came out, on the reprinting of the first volume of Susan Sontag's, well, our collaboration on a book on women from 1999. And then we, it was, you know, Hillary Clinton had asked me, she wanted to commemorate the book in some way. She reached out to me over a year ago, and I thought about, you know, know it could be nice to reprint it because it's out of print and so I sat down and looked at it and really liked it I don't I don't think of it as really a time capsule but I think of it as as a moment in some in some way but I realized that I had all this work since 1999 that you know Not that I ever thought I was going to do a book on women again.

10:44And I thought, you know, maybe we can make a companion book to go with the first book. And we threw it together in the last year. And of course, I immediately went to Gloria and asked her if she would, you know, consider writing for it. It was interesting because I reread Gloria's essay this morning when I got up because I've been struggling with trying to talk about the book. And I don't really I don't I don't really feel like I'm qualified to, you know, as a word. I'm not a wordsmith to be able to talk about these photographs and other than um how proud I am of of the women in in in these books um and and impressed with them you know especially in the second book you know and um so I you know I'm not Shumamanda Adichie and I'm not Gloria Steinem and I'm certainly not Susan Sontag so I'm like you know but but the Gloria the Gloria Steinem and what I'm trying to get at is when when I asked Gloria if she would write something she sent me something over that was kind of about me and I I just called her up and I said, Gloria, no, no.

12:14We need to know. I want to know, are we okay? They took Roe versus Wade away. Are we okay? What's going on? What's going on? You have to write about yourself. Please write about yourself.

12:35Gloria had an abortion. and um and and she did write about it previously so she wrote about she really opened herself up in in in this um you know in in this essay and it's it's so good i i have to do a talk tomorrow night and and i'm just gonna i'm just gonna read from the essay it's so it's so good it's interesting because I loved her saying about you know you're the tallest unsure person because you just cited these women and you know you're every bit as eloquent as as they are using a different medium and that is good for people who who don't read and they like to see things and it's so striking and and informative and and thought-provoking so um and it is they they are the most beautiful books and then it's wonderful to have these essays in as well so sometimes it's hard to to read unless you're provoked into reading and then suddenly you're able to read and um and i think your work is very effective in that and and i know you were one of six children and i wondered how you got attention no we didn't we were abandoned we were totally abandoned no no we were like you know um there's a photograph of my parents in um photographer's life and it's I'm visiting them in Florida and they're in the kitchen and, and I walk into the kitchen.

14:18I must've been standing in the doorway for like about 10 minutes or something. They never really turned around, but you know, I said, Oh my God, this is, this is, this is the picture of my parents. Um, you know, I think my mother just liked babies. She just kept having babies but um but she she was a force she was really um an amazing you know she really um brought us up all interested in in art and being creative and you know she studied with martha graham and um you know i think um she was just um you know she made us all take piano lessons i mean we all know we you know i think i knew early on i was going to be you know in in art in some way um you know so yes there yes there's one of six but um you know it was it was actually a great childhood uh even being abandoned you know but we always knew we were loved we really always knew we were loved um i just think my mother probably shouldn't really have had children because she wasn't she didn't really want to be a mother i think she really wanted you know more and um to be an artist yeah yeah yeah yeah because you you talk about her being a dancer and then you said dance can't be photographed and i wondered what you meant by that because you have done that you have managed no i've photographed um you know poses or yeah I mean well that's what's so beautiful about it as an art is that it's euphorial like that you know it's just in the air it's like

16:13um I've had many conversations about filming dance and um apparently there was there was a a woman who snuck a camera into you know the met you know and sat in the balcony and filmed dance from you know from the balcony you know and and those films are amazing of dance you know but I think I think I think I don't know it's it's not it hasn't really but that's what's so wonderful about it you can't really it's a bit like fashion shows actually because when you film them they they don't have that impact yeah I had no idea about fashion yeah until I started you know doing that work for Vogue and you know it was always for the low man on the totem pole for me as far as as far as photography was I mean of course I as a young photographer you know I I looked at work from Europe and and and New York you know you know Gaper Dan and yeah Helmut Newton and Abadon and Irving Penn and I mean the fashion photographers you know then you go back into the history to Steichen and Beaten and all that incredible work.

17:33So you admired it, but it wasn't like something as a photographer who grew up with or studied Robert Frank and Cartier-Bresson. It was not like something that you aspired to be as a fashion photographer. But the first couture I did for Anna Wintour, which was Kate Moss and Sean Combs in Paris, and with Grace Coddington, if you can imagine. Gosh. And I went, and they didn't tell me to go to the fashion shows, but I did go and I saw, oh my God, this is art. This is art. I mean, this is... I had no idea. I had no idea until you sit in those shows and see this work go down. But it's not filmed very well, no, ever, ever.

18:33You would have no idea. Yeah, it doesn't have that. It doesn't make you crazy the way. When you're watching it, you have this sense of something extraordinary has been made and is being shown. And in that moment, it's so intense. And then it kind of stays. And yeah, because it's interesting. You said, you know, I never imagined I'd get fashion or I'd be into fashion. But you really get, as soon as you started photographing it, you got it entirely and then went with the grandeur of it. Well, I went all over the place with it. I didn't take it seriously to begin with. Bia Feitler was a very, very important art director that I, she seemed to, you know, she, of course, she gave Diane Arbus her work at Harper's Bazaar.

19:29I mean, she was very close with Diane Arbus. But she was, she did all those incredible issues at Harper's Bazaar with Ruth Ansel and, you know, Jean Shrimpton, the blinking eye. and she was an incredible, but she really mentored me and told me if I was going to do fashion that you had to see, you could shoot any way you want, but you had to see the clothes. So it already came with some rules to it,

20:10which I made my best. I mean, I stayed to that rule. I definitely, and there are people that you photograph in fashion. Like when I photographed Rihanna, that was it. It was like being on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1975. As far as I'm concerned, I mean, she loves fashion. she she's just um so smart and brilliant and you know um and what she did with being pregnant is you know she took the demie more idea and totally blew that out of the water i mean she's just such a brilliant incredible person i've tried to write about photographing her but i i it's really like being you know taken into this this this this world um it's few and far between so i i think i'm headed back to portraits and stories i i i admire the designers they're they they're like great artists with bea feitler you said that she told you had to edit your work and I wondered how that translated what did you do when she said that to you well she said I had to learn how to edit my work I didn't know how to edit my work I was I've been working for Rolling Stone for like almost 13 years 12 well like probably 11 12 years at that point and I would just bring my work in because I would be like a child saying oh look what I did you know she said Anna you have to edit your work you have to you can't just bring it all in you know like had and and it really was work to learn how to edit because she could edit she would edit in 10 minutes and then she would sort of sit me down and I have to go through it and try to

22:14you know try to do what she did it took me you know a couple hours to go to go through it the way the way she went through it but I I come out the other end of it I'm actually a good editor now yeah yeah and I don't worry about how much I shoot or you know because you and funny this this time out no one's really asked me how many pictures do I take before but that was a question that would be asked um I don't really care I mean it's just like sometimes I shoot and to make it look like I'm shooting just you know so but I'm I know I'm not shooting I know I'm not really getting you know what what what what can be working you getting closer to the thing you know is your shot when you're shooting and not shooting i mean it's it's different every single time i don't know my my photographs are not really i think still left over from those early um personal repertoire you know ideas yeah cardi brazon and robert frank they really are they're more pulled back you know i i like being somewhere in an environment and showing where you are if you can be somewhere can't always be somewhere i'm a terrible i'm a terrible studio photographer i really don't like the studio it's it feels too uh scary to me god it's really like yeah it's just you and the person and then you have to make it up even more.

23:51Sometimes you get so tired of making it up. You don't want to make it up. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want to make it up. That's which is why I like to go.

24:02It's so funny because I have to do I'm doing something with someone in January and she said, I don't want to go outside. It's going to be too cold because my shoots have been likened an outward bound experience, you know, like, because I, you know, like I should just shut, shut my, my, you know, my work down in the winter, you know, because it's just, it's just too cold to go outside. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need.

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25:45Learn more and start customizing your corporate program at americanexpress.com slash corporate. Terms apply. Because your father was in the military during the Vietnam War when everyone was out and about marching against it too. And your first pictures, I think, were of people on the army based in the Philippines. You've done your research, Bella. Oh, I always, always. I like to get fully immersed and feel your life. No, Bella, I'm so impressed, really. Were your Rolling Stone photographs a version of protest pictures? Because they're so visible. I was living in San Francisco. It was, it was, um, I was going to a school, the San Francisco Art Institute that had the GI Bill.

26:40Soldiers would come through there from Vietnam, you know, um, going to, I was going to school with, with, with soldiers that, that want, that were photographers who, you know, talked to me about their experiences of being out on, on the, you know, on the front there. and basically not really holding a gun, but holding their cameras and taking pictures of, you know, the flares going up at night. No, it was just part of,

27:15it was part of everything that was going on in San Francisco. I mean, it was really so prevalent. I mean, there were protests every day. There were, you know, like demonstrations. It was very much a way of life, you know, in San Francisco. So he was like, you know, or are you going down to the demonstration downtown? You know, like, you know, it's what you kind of did. I mean, and, you know, I was taught to just photograph. You know, it didn't matter what you were really, you know, photographing. It was really about seeing. And so it's true. I had just gone down to this demonstration in the middle of San Francisco, and I brought the work the next day to Rolling Stone magazine to see.

28:08And I would take the work back to the school darkroom and process the film and print the same day. So Rolling Stone was impressed, I think, that that could be done. But it was just part of, I mean, it was Berkeley. Berkeley had, it seemed like it's what was going on all the time. Yeah, yeah, because you were 20 when you went into Rolling Stone magazine offices and showed your photographs, and then you became their star photographer. Well, I don't think it was quite that fast. When it began, it was like a fold-up newspaper. And it's, they, you know, understandably, they were very interested in writing.

29:03And they had no sense of visuals. You know, they had no sense of photography or they picked up a lot of pictures. And worse, they took photographs and cut them up and make collages and things like that. They didn't really understand the visual side. They were totally a word paper. And so over the years, we all grew up together. It was a young, very young, Jan and Jane Winter, very young group. and incredible writers, like Hunter Thompson and Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote. But I remember when Avedon did the special issue on the, he called it The Family, which was really politics and the state of the world in America at the time, the whole set of portraits.

30:05And Jan Wiener gave him the whole issue for those photographs. It was really, as far as I'm concerned, a great moment. The magazine had learned how to use visuals and photography. And so I felt just as successful with Avedon's Special Issue. I was so proud of the magazine. Because you work closely with Hunter S. Thompson, And I wondered, I mean, you were kind of the terrible twins, and I wondered if you discussed ideas of what it would look like, you know, when you were photographing the things of his story, so you didn't. I just have to laugh. No, no. I don't think anyone really knew what anyone else was doing, really.

31:02It was really kind of flying by the seat of your pants. And Hunter, I've written about Hunter a little bit in that work, but he really liked to work by himself. I mean, he would push me away. And I've said that by pushing me away, I learned how to make my own way. Yeah, yeah. And at a certain point, because originally I was sent out with writers, and at a certain point I didn't want to go with writers any longer. I just wanted to go on my own. And because the writer had their idea and then I had my idea. And I always thought those two ideas could go together. You know, they weren't necessarily, you know, separate in some way.

31:52But, you know, Hunter, yeah, no, Hunter was very special, you know, insane person. Brilliant, genius. and um you know because i i love the story about the nixon story where he was he hate he loathed him so much and then when he finally was out he couldn't write the piece and you did the whole story as a photograph right they were holding they were holding a 10 or 11 pages yeah um for for his story at rolling stone and they didn't know what to do and they just took my pictures and they ran them and and it was like shocking really but yeah no he you know i was at the white house and he was at the pool you know at this hotel you know um listen what you know he never made it to the white house he wasn't his style i mean he isn't how he it isn't how he wrote yeah so because you photographed a lot of bands and musical stars And then when the Rolling Stones went on tour and you decided to go with them, and Jan Wenner, the editor of Rolling Stones, said, don't go on tour with the Rolling Stones.

33:08Too many people come back drug addicts, but you went anyway. And I came back a drug addict. What was your drug of choice? It took me about eight years to get off the tour. No, so to try to put more color to that story, you know, basically Robert Frank went on the tour with Danny Seymour in 1972. Really? And he did a film called Cocksuckers Blues. Oh, yeah. And I was covering, I went to two or three cities on the 72 tour. And I couldn't believe I was that close to Robert Frank. I mean, he was like my hero and my god. And at one point he even picked up my camera and I was like trembling. Because he was, you know, it was Robert Frank.

34:10You know, it was just, I couldn't believe it. So the 75 tour came rolling along, and I got a call from Mick Jaggers asking if I would be the tour photographer. And I thought, well, of course, you know, Robert Frank can do it. I want to go out and try to do it. You know, I didn't know what I was going to do. I mean, I, so naive. I mean, I, you know, they were staying as they went from city to city. They were staying in these really great hotels. I brought my tennis racket. I thought, you know, I'm going to really take some some lessons from the, you know, the lead tennis guy at each hotel and I'll improve my tennis game.

34:53I was really excited to like, you know, go on the tour. And of course, I never saw the light of day. I mean, I kind of immediately sort of went into their world. I mean, I can really stand outside of myself and look at that work and go, oh, my God. You know, I mean, it's like I just never put the camera down. I shot all the time. The work is like this river. It's just the detail is incredible. The imagery is, you know, kind of incredible. It really is amazing. And it's this work of this very young, I'm outside of myself looking at my young self, thinking this kind of, it's my example to young photographers of what you need when you first start.

35:48You know, the kind of insanity, the kind of obsession, the kind of, the verve, the energy, the drive. the you know it's it's a powerful set of pictures you know um that I didn't look at for years and years until years and years years later yeah it's a it's a really incredible uh example of of of that period and how I was photographing um but um yes it definitely almost um yeah killed me You know, I thought at the time that in order to take a good picture, you really had to become one with your subject. You have to be more involved. And what a stupid idea to do this with a band of men, you know.

36:41It could have been more stupid, but I was young and crazy. And, you know, it took me a while to, I mean, I wasn't used to something overtaking me. Yeah. And it took me a while to get the right help to, you know, stop taking drugs. Yeah. But once I found the right help, it's like within a month, it was over. Wow. That was it. It was like no more, you know. Because you said something about not wanting drugs to close you down, but to open you up. And I wondered what your favorite drug was to do that. Oh, it was cocaine. Because I never wanted to, you know, I just wanted to keep moving, keep moving.

37:34But it totally does a reverse thing at a certain point. It just, you know, it robs you of everything. But I have to say, it definitely, having that experience as a photographer and thinking that I had to become one with whatever I was photographing, you know, I definitely rebuilt my stance on that. I basically, you know, will never, you know, go to that extent where you give yourself up completely like that. You know, just, you know, I definitely, if you sometimes feel in my work, I'm just a step back or two. It's because of that experience for sure. Yeah. you know i'm a passionate bookmaker and i just love i love books it's really where my work is and so photographer's life had you know had that for sure is it okay if i have a glass yes please do yeah