I had the once in a lifetime (okay, well, hopefully more than that) priviledge of starting my new year (well,....okay, technically, it was ENDING my LAST year - and last as in PREVIOUS, not FINAL) by attending an exhibit by my absolute favourite photographer, Annie Leibovitz. While visiting Washington DC in December, the land whose corners and everything in between tower under robust government buildings, The Corcoran Museum was featuring A Photographers Life, 1990-2005. I knew the address of this place by heart before I even left my driveway for my trip. It had become so memorized in fact, that when I was (temporarily) rejected by my customs officer in Ottawa (a story for a whole other blog)(preferably one that encourages swearing) for not knowing the address of the residence I was staying at during my visit, I was highly tempted to jot down the museums coordinates. I didn't, but I wanted to. And I got in. To the country, that is. Eventually.
Getting in to the museum proved to be leaps and bounds easier than getting in to America for me. The Corcoran was a short hop, skip, and jump away from the apartment I was staying at downtown. It featured both the incomparable Annie Leibovitz, and Ansel Adams. I have always been a person that gets "museumed" out quickly, but this exhibit could have gone on forever and I'd've been ready. It featured 200 images from her latest book, blending her personal and professional work. Some have said it is her personal work that takes center stage as most powerful in the collection, while still others have lamented the jarring effect they feel is created by her glossy professional shots juxtaposed with shots of her family in the backyard, or mother striking dance poses in the oceans edge. I feel this is crap and reflects either a lazy, or misunderstanding audience. The "purpose" of this latest book was to pay tribute to Susan Sontag and the fifteen years the pair of powerful artists spent in eachothers company. Why does any piece of art have to have one particular theme? I agree of course that such lack of boundaries could be easily done erronously, but if the theme of a collection is the passage of time, how can we, familiar with the changes, ebbs, and flows of something so ellusive, expect a singular common thread to run throughout it? If that's what a person wants, they should pick up Women, or American Music. Those books are linear in such a way. I think in order to appreciate this collection one must open his or her mind to what a handful of years like fifteen would include. Clearly, I didn't find the exhibit jarring at all. What I found jarring were the other people around me. And there weren't even that many. But I wanted to be alone with the portraits. Cause I was, and still am, pretty sure that I wanted to be there more than anybody else.
Leibovitz's work strikes something in me that I can't quite put my finger on. The same way Ray Bradbury did when I found him. Or Jeanette Winterson. Or Tom Waits, Burt Jansch, or The Fugitives. But all of those people used words, and I'm a wordy person, to reach people, so it didn't surprise me that they worked for me. But an artist without words has never spoke to me the way Leibovitz's work does. There is something arresting, striking, startling about her portraits. Maybe it's the opportunity to stare at someone. If her subjects are looking at the camera, they obviously end up looking like they are looking back at you. With the same intensity that you're looking at them. And we're not used to looking at people for so long without it becoming weird. Can you imagine examining even your closest friends face with the same intent that you are free to examine a portrait? Or maybe it's the feeling her work creates that you are on display as much as her subjects are when they're looking back at you. That you're being pondered and determined in your surroundings. That someone is looking so unabashedly at your core.
I tried to return to the exhibit a few days later, but it was closed. I didn't get any further than the gift shop. Which was still very nice. It had collections by Avedon, which was exciting because I knew who that was. I had to stop myself from proclaiming my status as a photography student, thinking this might give people the impression that I understood Leibovitz's work, or Avedon's, or Adam's, better somehow. Likely biting my tongue saved me from reminding them of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, when he runs past security guards to return something to a customer, then turns around and attempts to explain himself by shouting, "It's okay! I'm a limo driver!" The gift shop also had a little how-to photography book by National Geographic, which I picked up for a friend who still maintains that the only piece of photographic equipment one needs is a cellphone with a camera, like his. That he doesn't know how to use.
Seeing the exhibit gave me all the motivation I need for the new semester. Not that thrilling kind that courses through your veins and makes your heart beat like an anxiety attack. Thank God. Because I think that kind tends to wear off eventually anyways. Rather, I am just completely inspired. I want to be as good at "my style" as she is at hers. I'm so far away from it, I think I knew more about photography before I even started this course!, but I know that's just a feeling, and I love PrairieView's program because it gives you the opportunity to shoot something every day. If I wasn't immersed in this environment every day, I probably wouldn't be working on it this intensively. I'd probably be telling myself I'd start to soon. But I wouldn't. I'm not the kind of person that picks up on things well by learning them on my own. Or by taking a night class once a week. In our first class back, our Digital Techniques teacher talked about the gap he suspects we are feeling between where we want our skills to be, and where they currently actually are. But after Washington, I feel more certain that those skills are there. And if they're not, more determined then even to put them there.