Ani Leibovitz wants to be clear from the start: she is not a fashion photographer. Given that her latest book, Phaidon Editions, is an anthology of fashion photographs taken primarily for Vogue, this is puzzling. However, since the book was based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, it may not surprise us.

When Alice encounters a number of otherworldly characters, she wonders “Who the hell am I?” Through fashion, Leibovitz asks the same question. “I grew up working in this genre, but it did not fit my own perception of myself and my work. I want everything to matter. There is ambivalence and irony in the book,” he told me later.

As a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, Leibovitz was inspired by the realistic and spontaneous photographs of Robert Franck and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Although he admired the work of Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn, he had no desire to emulate them: “I thought fashion was sloppy.”

We met at Studio 525 in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, where Hauser & Wirth was putting on a five-day pop-up show for Wonderland. Leibovitz, 72, moved carefully as her hip was in pain and would need to be replaced surgically. She was wearing her usual attire: black trousers and a matching blouse. That morning, she asked one of her teenage daughters if she should wear the torn blue top she’s been wearing for 20 years, but she told her to wear a black one. “I am a creature of comfort,” he said. “I can’t imagine anyone looking at me.”

Leibovitz is one of the world’s leading portrait photographers, but I’ve long admired her fashion photography – in many ways, I think it’s her strongest work. For most people, Wonderland will be the first exposure to Leibovitz’s talent in this area.

I was ruthless to get the right photo. I didn’t behave well.

The 341 images in the book bear the imprint of Leibovitz’s style—the deft use of color, the theatrical direction, the masterful interplay of technical and natural light—but the best of them live up to the book’s title. They are charming, wrapped in visual storytelling that showcases her abilities as a passionate storyteller.

“Usually when someone does a fashion shoot, the goal is for the clothes to stand out,” says Phyllis Posnick, Vogue contributing editor and Liebowitz regular collaborator. “Ani “dresses” the image.” When I complimented Leibovitz on the book, she replied, “I don’t attach much importance to those compliments. I have a lot of experience.” He’s fifty years old, to be exact, and started out as a photojournalist for Rolling Stone. He captured some of the era’s most defining moments, from President Richard Nixon’s ignominious departure from the White House to a naked John Lennon curled up in a fetal position around Yoko Ono. At Vanity Fair, she became known for her distinctive concept portraits of names, including a naked Demi Moore seven months pregnant.

First time

Then, in 1993, writer Susan Sontag, Leibovich’s partner, encouraged her to deepen her work by documenting the conflict in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. But in 1998, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour – now Condé Nast’s global editorial director – offered her a job at the magazine. A year later, she was sent to Paris during haute couture shows for a photo essay with fashion magazine editor Grace Coddington. The photo essay featured Kate Moss and Sean Combs, then known as Puff Daddy.

Leibovitz, who had never attended a fashion show before, was “dazzled,” she said, commenting on the craftsmanship on display: “It was like performance art.” This experience made her appreciate fashion more. “But I could never be a regular fashion photographer,” she added, explaining that she considers herself a “conceptual artist using photography.”

James Danziger, whose gallery has represented Leibovitz for over a decade, first showed her fashion photographs in 2006. “It’s possible that, as is usually the case, these looks—great fashion photos—will hold up over time,” he said. emphasized. “This is how it happens in photography. Most celebrities will be forgotten, but fashion will remain.” Leibovitz continued to work for Vogue for the next 23 years, producing a significant body of work, but considered it “too gaudy” to write a book. In the end, different fashion designers were chosen to portray the various characters in the book, among them John Galliano as Lady Koopa, Tom Ford as the Hare, and Marc Jacobs as the Caterpillar. Karl Lagerfeld, who wanted to be the Hare, played himself. “I have always loved the way Annie brings a sense of storytelling and storytelling to her fashion photography,” Wintour wrote in an email. “He’s got a good eye and he’s good at picking up things that have personality, picking up conflict, romance, drama – you always feel like something interesting is happening, or about to happen, or just happened.”