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Description: Portrait commissions, observational work, photography of friends and loved ones and reportage from the well-known American photographer.
Phone: 0207312 2463
Website: www.npg.org.uk
Trains: Tube: Leicester Square; Rail: Charing Cross 
, Tube / Bus: 3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 23, 24, 29, 53, 77A, 88 
Extra info: Telephones, Air Conditioning, Food, Pub, Party Hire
Glamour, fantasy and family; love and loss. Such themes are not necessarily associated with the celebrity portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz, but this well-designed, 150-piece collection represents lesser-known sides of her commercial and private work.
Her early career, shooting rock stars for Rolling Stone, segued into the grown-up celebrity world of Vanity Fair, which is where this exhibition opens. Leibovitz’s first VF portraits were penetrating Avedon-like studio shots which include Al Pacino and Daniel Day Lewis.
Part of her future success lay in her determination to penetrate the celebrity mask while enjoying the Hollywood-scale production numbers of the cover portraits. The success of her pregnant Demi Moore cover marked a turning point in her work.
But while many VF portraits are popular for their unexpected representations of Hollywood myth-makers, the poised statue-like Nicole Kidman in a floor-sweeping chiffon blur represents simple, classic glamour. A welcome and contrasting presence are the studies of several artists in their own contexts — Chuck Close in his wheelchair, Leigh Bowery encased in rubber.
Family photography was the norm for the Leibovitz family and, around 2000, Annie turned her camera onto them. She intersperses informal “snaps” with celebrity shots from the same real-time, and makes family central to this exhibition.
She explores family loss through Patti Smith and her children after their father’s death, and the writer Joan Didion, with the husband and daughter whose deaths inspired her book The Year of Magical Thinking.
The arrival in Leibovitz’s life of the academic writer Susan Sontag, and the birth of the photographer’s three children in her 50s, changes the tone. Sontag avoids presenting joyful expressions to the camera in a determined contrast with her partner’s other subjects but in Sarajevo, where she directs a play, the superstar photographer returns to reportage and captures many light-hearted moments.
On a similar, hand-held scale, she follows Sontag through her fatal cancer and captures the poignancy of new life held in her arms — alongside the glitzy commercial work. She never draws the line, shooting her babies’ first cries, her father’s grave, her lover in death.
The closing section, a corridor lined with the small prints and Polaroids from which the show was edited, is a scrapbook of the photographer’s parallel lives.
Until 1 February. Information: 0844 579 1924, www.npg.org.uk
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I have recently viewed the new exhibition and was very impressed by what I saw. It felt like I had been given access to her personal thoughts and feelings especially when looking at pictures of her family. With the photographs of her sports people, politicians and celebrities she catches them in different lights from what they are normally seen. I am so glad that I went to see the exhibition and would highly recommend it to anyone. I had only heard about or seen a few pictures by her before, but after seeing this exhibition I have become more interested and more of a fan of her work.
- Joanne Rook, chingford, london
