Annie Leibovitz: Stream of Consciousness

‘Annie Leibovitz: Stream of Consciousness’ presents a group of works—landscapes, still lifes and portraits––made by the distinguished American artist over the last two decades. Forgoing a linear timeline and conventional thematic constraints, the exhibition reveals Leibovitz’s associative thought processes and the fluid visual dialogue created among photographs that call attention to significant cultural markers of our time.

‘Exhibitions of my work are usually arranged chronologically. The images tell a story shaped by time. But there are some photographs––Georgia O’Keeffe’s red hill, the portrait of Joan Didion in Central Park—that rhyme with photographs from other places, other times. They aren’t moored to the moment they were made. I keep returning to these images’ –– Annie Leibovitz

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‘Stream of Consciousness’ features both familiar images of iconic writers, performers and visual artists—Amy Sherald, Billie Eilish and Salman Rushdie are among them––and images that have never been exhibited publicly before. These include the Selldorf suite of photographs, which was created at the historic Frick Collection on East 70th Street in New York City just days after Leibovitz returned from a visit with Annabelle Selldorf at the architect’s home in Maine. Selldorf had been charged with the sensitive task of the revered museum’s renovation and she had spoken to Leibovitz about the design challenges she was addressing. When they met again at the construction site in Manhattan, Leibovitz composed the four images that visitors will see first upon entering this exhibition.

‘Steam of Consciousness’ includes portraits of contemporary cultural figures such as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Stephen Hawking alongside images of landscapes, interiors and historical ephemera—Abraham Lincoln’s top hat and Elvis Presley’s bullet-riddled television. The associative juxtapositions show Leibovitz’s diverse range of subjects and ability to balance intimacy and theatricality, the exquisitely personal and the grandly universal. Her eye is guided by intuition and a preternatural sense of narrative.

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Leibovitz is the recipient of many honors. In 2006, she was made a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She has received the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the first Creative Excellence Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the Centenary Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in London, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art Award to Distinguished Women in the Arts, the Wexner Prize and the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. She has been designated a Living Legend by the United States Library of Congress and and in 2024 was inducted into the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She lives in New York with her three children, Sarah, Susan and Samuelle.

Several collections of Leibovitz’s work have been published. They include ‘Annie Leibovitz: Photographs,’ (1983); ‘Annie Leibovitz: Photographs 1970–1990,’ (1991); ‘Olympic Portraits’ (1996); ‘Women,’ (1999), in collaboration with Susan Sontag; ‘American Music,’ (2003); ‘A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005,’ (2006); ‘Annie Leibovitz at Work’ (2008; revised edition 2018 and 2024), a first-person commentary on her career; and ‘Pilgrimage,’ (2011); ‘Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005-2016,’ (2017); ‘Annie Leibovitz: The Early Years, 1970-1983,’ (2018); ‘Annie Leibovitz: Wonderland,’ (2021).

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