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Annie Leibovitz : Pilgrimage charts a new direction for one of Americas best-known living photographers. Unlike her staged and carefully lit portraits made on assignment for magazines and advertising clients, the photographs in this exhibition were taken simply because Leibovitz was moved by the subject. The images speak in a commonplace language to the photographers curiosity about the world she inherited, spanning landscapes both dramatic and quiet, interiors of living rooms and bedrooms, and objects that are talismans of past lives.
The pictures, although there are no people in them, are in a certain sense portraits of subjects that have shaped Leibovitzs distinctly American view of her cultural inheritance. Visiting the homes of iconic figures including Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Georgia OKeeffe, Pete Seeger, and Elvis Presley, as well as places such as Niagara Falls, Walden Pond, Old Faithful, and the Yosemite Valley, she let her instincts and intuitions guide her to related subjectshence the title Pilgrimage. A visit to the studio of Daniel Chester French, the sculptor of the seated statue at the Lincoln Memorial, led her to photograph the Gettsyburg battlefield and Lincoln artifacts at the Smithsonian. Some of the pictures focus on the remaining traces of photographers and artists she admires, such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Ansel Adams, and Robert Smithson.
Pilgrimage is an evocative and deeply personal statement by a photographer whose career now spans more than forty years, encompassing a broad range of subject matter, history, and stylistic influences. Together the pictures show Leibovitz at the height of her powers, unfettered by the demands of her commercial career and pondering how photographs, including her own, shape a narrative of history that informs the present.
Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage is organized by guest curator Andy Grundberg, former New York Times photography critic. A set of photographs from Pilgrimage will be acquired by the museum for its permanent collection.
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KünstlerInnen: Annie Leibovitz
