American Music - Photographs (Hardcover)

Musicians have been central to Annie Leibovitz's long and celebrated career. She became a professional photographer in 1970, when she was a nineteen-year-old student at the San Francisco Art Institute and submitted a portfolio to the editor of "Rolling Stone magazine. By 1973 she was "Rolling Stone's chief photographer, and over the next decade she created a legendary body of work. "American Music includes portraits from Leibovitz's archives, among them photographs of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, the Grateful Dead, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Presley, but the bulk of the work is new material created especially for the "American Music project. Leibovitz traveled across the country, taking pictures in juke joints and at iconic sites like Graceland. She photographed B. B. King at the Club Ebony in his hometown of Indianola in the Mississippi Delta, Willie Nelson at his recording studio in Texas, Johnny Cash at the Carter Family compound in Hinds, Virginia, and Aretha Franklin's childhood home in Memphis. The subjects of her portraits include Bruce Springsteen, the Reverend AI Green, Beck, Bob Dylan, Mary J. Blige, Jon Bon Jovi, Eminem, Steve Earle, Ryan Adams, Lucinda Williams, Philip Glass, Marvin Gaye, Anita O'Day, Quincy Jones, Pete Seeger, Emmylou Harris, Chuck Berry, The Dixie Chicks, and Dr. Dre. The musicians Patti Smith, Rosanne Cash, Lou Reed, and Beck have contributed short essays to the book, and there will be a commentary about the "American Music project by Leibovitz, as well as short biographical sketches of all the musicians.