Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens

Xan Brooks
Friday February 15, 2008
The Guardian

Originally made for American TV, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens is an illuminating study of the doyen of celebrity photography, charting her rise from unaffected hippie chancer to her current position as quasi-official portrait artist for the Hollywood elite. Actually this turns out to be more akin to a fall, since the early, Rolling Stone work is far superior. The film revisits the defiant theatre of Nixon's exit from the White House, peruses the legendary shots of John Lennon and Yoko Ono and hears the stories behind her crisp, Walker Evans-esque photojournalism. Compared to these, those lucrative Vanity Fair commissions just can't compete. By and large, they involve contorting her subjects into unnatural, airbrushed tableux that are at once wildly decadent and oddly un-involving.

 

The fact that the documentary was shot by Leibovitz's sister, Barbara, proves to be a mixed blessing. We are allowed what at first appears to be limitless access only to suspect that the film is playing coy in certain areas, so that crucial details relating to her relationship with Susan Sontag or her apparently debilitating drug addiction are left tantalisingly out of focus. One comes away with the sense that Leibovitz's photography is at its best when it is shot on the hoof; free and natural and gently indiscreet. This film does too.

 

by and large – ogólnie biorąc, w sumie

chart- zapisywać, rejestrować

contort – wykrzywiać, wyginać

coy – skromny, nieśmiały, wstydliwy

crisp – świeży; rzeczowy, zwięzły

debilitating - osłabiający

defiant – buntowniczy, bezczelny, prowokatorski

doyen - nestor

illuminating – pouczający, wyjaśniający

on the hoof – (zrobiony) z marszu

peruse – badawczo się przyglądać; przeglądać

tableau , l. mn. tableux – żywy obraz

tantalisingly -  zwodniczo, złudnie; w dokuczliwy sposób

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Główna Czytelnia Filmy Recenzje filmowe z Guardiana Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens
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