I have never seen a more listless, careless, loveless farrago of an exhibition before. Annie Leibovitz might not be the greatest photographer on earth but one has to keep in mind: she is not a freelancing artist but works for magazines and other paying customers. She has to take their point of view or has to keep their profit in mind. As for her protrait clientele, she has to make sure that they are pleased with the image she is going to deliver. One can argue that she doesn’t take a clear standpoint in her work or that there is no recognizable line or touch, which makes her work unique and distinguishable as an “Annie Leibovitz” picture. But Annie Leibovitz did create some images that will stand for a very long time such as the John Lennon/Yoko Ono cuddle, some of her Keith Richards/Mick Jagger images and other imagery for the Rolling Stones magazine, Whoopi Goldberg in milk, Demi Moore pregnant and naked as well as the Trumps, also pregnant and shown on transport vehicles. And no one can argue her mastery of technique as well as her feeling for what is implied in the very word “to photograph” (drawing or painting with light from the greek words phos & graphein). But this exhibition paid no heed to any of that at all. No concept or idea behind the arrangements of pictures and formats, they seemed to be thrown on the walls erratically, with very bad lighting on top, thoughtless hanging, not even a chronological line of some sort could be found, it just goes on and on. For f***’s sake, she is a photographer. Did the people in charge of this exhibition know that fact? It might have been her wish to intermingle very personal and private images with her professional work but surely there are a thousand ways of doing it more intelligently than what has been achieved in Berlin. I am not a huge Annie Leibovitz fan, but I felt wronged and insulted on her behalf, really.
Such a shame, Talk talk
floatsome 