Annie at the Barbican

Last night, after a long and exhausting day at work that is better not spoken about, I went with some friends to the Barbican to hear the photographer Annie Leibovitz talk about her new book, a two-volume set dedicated to portraits of women. My friend Colin offered me one of his extra tickets on Sunday, and I jumped at the chance because -- photography! (Even though the kind of portraiture that is Annie Leibovitz's specialty isn't really my kind of picture-taking.)

We met at the restaurant in the Barbican overlooking the central reflecting pond. Another co-worker, Mike, came as well. As you can see above, the church across the way already has its Christmas tree up and lit. We had a good dinner -- fish & chips and a gin & tonic for me, two essentially British pairings!

I tried to photograph the unusual round, concrete restrooms at the Barbican, but I couldn't get the whole space into a single frame. So I took a pano shot, which distorts things, but I think it turned out pretty well! The toilets themselves are around that curve at left. You can even see me in the mirror. The space looked like something out of "A Clockwork Orange," but I guess it must be incredibly easy to clean. You could just hose it down.

Anyway, the Leibovitz talk was a bit disappointing. As I told Mike and Colin afterwards, some people are visual communicators and some people are verbal, and Leibovitz is definitely the former. She started by showing slides of her earlier portraits of women, which featured in the first volume, but some slides contained about a dozen thumbnail pictures and it was hard to see them. She also basically just ran down the list of who was featured -- Elizabeth Taylor, Martha Stewart, Dolly Parton, etc. -- but she didn't tell many stories or talk much about the processes she uses to take her portraits. I would like to have heard more about how she gets people to relax, to reveal themselves.

Then she went through slides of the photos in the more recent volume, and then took a few questions in a disastrous Q&A. She declined to use the pre-submitted questions the Barbican had collected, and instead had the poor host trying to pass a microphone from the stage out to the audience, where the questions were often unfocused and Leibovitz was obviously having trouble hearing and understanding them. The questions rambled and the answers rambled.

So I wouldn't call it an altogether successful evening, but it was still interesting to see her and see her work. I suppose at the end of the day the pictures are supposed to speak for themselves, right?

She did talk about how London felt lighter to her, and less oppressed, than the United States does right now. She is clearly opposed to Trump's governance and threw in a few somewhat political remarks here and there. For example, she showed a picture of a room at the White House featuring portraits of the first ladies, and said something like, "Who knows if it still exists?"