Also teeny tiny was Dede Wilsey, who I stood this close to. My exposure to Dede, society maven and DeYoung bankroller, was previously limited to the memoir Oh the Glory of It All (Penguin, 2005) which I read, enraptured, during the entire flight to Barcelona two summers ago. Based on that book, I already hated Dede, considering her an evil, malicious homewrecker.

I also envisioned her, as described, with a severe, psychotic grin created by her tightly-stretched facelift and framed by million-dollar baubles. Up close, however, she seemed softer: her plastic surgery less severe; her body not hard, muscular, tight but old-woman-small; her hair wispy; and her demeanor surprisingly humble.

Dede "Evil Stepmother" Wilsey

Wilsey began the introductions by talking about a conversation she'd had with her son, Hollywood producer Todd Traina, a Hollywood producer who was in town to open Le Club). After listening to Traina wax poetic about Leibovitz, she asked him to give her one quote to sum up Annie's photographry. She then paused on the dais…

“He said: ‘She photographs with love.’”

I’ll grudgingly admit, it's a pretty apt description of Leibovitz’s art, and much how Leibovitz herself describes it. She doesn’t like when someone says, “you captured someone” in a photo, or “you got someone’s soul.” She only shoots their surface. At best, she documents life at a certain time. But her self-professed weakness is that she likes to like people, she calls her pictures “mushy, soft.” She admires Diane Arbus’s photography, but can’t replicate the hard, ugly truth of those pictures. “I’m dangerous,” Leibovitz said. “Put me in a room with Nixon and I’ll come out thinking, ‘He’s nice!’”

Indeed, Leibovitz looks like someone who would like people too much; she is someone I’d want to like me. Her hair is a wispy silver-blonde. Her face is more homely than beautiful, with her large, hooked nose, but somehow also refined. She slouches forward, giving the impression that she’s in perpetual motion. That particular morning, she wore a chic combination of black pants and shirt, punctuated with cartoonish, poufy Technicolor red and blue Nike running shoes. And as she gave us a tour of her new exhibit, explaining each photograph, she seemed kind, patient, down-to-earth, and wryly humorous.

Susan’s Shell Collection

Susan's Shell Collection

The Legion of Honor exhibit was based upon Leibovitz’s new book, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005 (Random House, 2006), which was, in turn, spawned by two personal tragedies: the death of her lover, noted writer Susan Sontag, and that of her father. For the first time ever, Leibovitz displayed personal photographs along with her famous assignments, perhaps suggesting that the camera never turns off for the photographer. (When on assignment, a photog doesn’t stop thinking as a lover; just as in the bedroom or nursery, they still think as photographer.)

After Sontag’s death from cancer, Leibovitz found herself looking at a small book of photographs from the funeral — and found them compelling. She went up to her barn, built two walls, and started tacking up photographs, one side for family, another for assignment shots. From there, she began the process of deciding which to include in her new book. (A recreation of those two walls can be seen in the exhibit).
When the first show opened, “as I walked through, I began to shudder. As time passed, and I became removed from my work, it really opened me up. I won’t put my family out there — at first I had misgivings about what I had done — and I won’t do it again.”

The personal photographs must be seen — they are beautiful, tender, and heartbreaking. Leibovitz shot Sontag throughout family vacations, personal vacations, real estate hunting trips to Paris, chemo, and, finally, death. Leibovitz does not shoot as if to capture her lover in the glory of life, to remember Susan healthy and lively. And yet, each picture does not look as if it should be captioned “CANCER.” Leibovitz avoids both of those all-too-easy schmaltzy exaggerations and personifications of illness; the pictures are honest. Sontag looks grumpy, happy, contemplative, real.

Bush

Leibovitz showed some of her wry humor in front of a portrait of Bush, Condi, and co. “He’s very Texan,” she said, pointing to President Bush in a photo she took of him, Condi, and co. “He always acts like he’s still on a ranch somewhere, stands like he just got off a horse [she mimics a gunslinger’s slouch], so I wanted him to be standing in this portrait.”

Her good temper suddenly melted into frustration.

“He just looks so well-rested. I mean, he looks like he gets eight hours sleep a night. He looks like he’s just come from a spa. He should look like a wreck! He should be like LBJ did during Vietnam.”
Just as quickly, her anger deflates. “I don’t think he takes it in.”

Diddy

Leibovitz smirked, with affection, when she talked about Diddy. And really, how else is there to talk about the “Vote Or DIE!” sloganeer than with an affectionate smirk? Diddy was being shot for a couture spread, and Leibovitz set up a big party scene. She intended Diddy to be on the far left and the girl on the right, their eyes meeting in the midst of the designers and other celebrities posed around the middle. Diddy didn’t like the idea of being on the left. “He didn’t come to Paris not to be in the middle of the picture,” said Leibovitz. She gave in to his demands and put him in the middle.

She shook her head. “People think the important part of the picture is the middle. Anyone who’s done work in composition knows that the right and left hand sides are just as weighted, just as important.”

Mother

This is one of Leibovitz’s favorites: a portrait of her mother in the yard, unsmiling, her age etched across her face. “My mother always smiled in pictures, even in the worst times,” said the photographer. But it wasn’t real to Leibovitz; she wanted a picture showing her mother’s age. As her mother sat, she told Leibovitz, “I’m afraid I’ll look old.”

“I told her I thought she was beautiful anyway. But it was hard. It was really hard.”

Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life
Tues.-Sun., 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m., through May 25. $15.
Legion of Honor Lincoln Park
34th Ave., SF
(415) 750-3600
www.legionofhonor.org