A biography for Annie Leibovitzhasn’t been written yet.
“What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not.”
“I feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.”
“The pictures of my family were designed to be on a family wall, they were supposed to be together. It was supposed to copy my mother's wall in her house.”
“I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.”
“I'm more interested in being good than being famous.”
“I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul - I don't think this is possible all of the time.”
“Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.”
“I realized I couldn't be a journalist because I like to take a side, to have an opinion and a point a view; I liked to step across the imaginary boundary of the objective view that the journalist is supposed to have and be involved.”
“When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, the person's time, turns out to be the most valuable thing.”
“Coming tight was boring to me, just the face... it didn't have enough information.”
“There were some advantages to being a woman photographer. I think women have more empathy with the subject.”
“I'm a huge, huge fan of photography. I have a small photography collection. As soon as I started to make some money, I bought my very first photograph: an Henri Cartier-Bresson. Then I bought a Robert Frank.”
“If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.”
“I've never liked the word 'celebrity.' I like to photograph people who are good at what they do.”
“Everyone keeps asking you for pictures, and after a while you get tired of that. I always say, They are in the archives.”
“When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.”
“I'd like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.”
“I try to be home for dinner, but I'm not there enough. I sometimes feel I'm still fumbling, getting it wrong, but I make my way.”
“I feel very proud of the work from the '80s because it is very bright and colorful.”
“I feel unbelievably blessed that I have had the opportunity to photograph Malala in her classroom in Birmingham.”