Fashion was invited to the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris today.
Annie Leibovitz was received among the Immortals, as a foreign associate member of the Academy of Fine Arts, this Tuesday, March 20.
The American photographer thus inherits the chair of the architect Pei, who died in 2019. For the occasion, it was Anna Wintour who presented her with her academic sword after speaking to him a few words.
Her voice moved, the editorial director of
Vogue
praised the “X-ray vision” of Annie Leibovitz, before giving her a sword made of wooden branches collected near the Hudson River, where she grew up.
“Annie, you are now immortal,” she said, hidden behind her eternal and huge sunglasses.
The two women have in fact collaborated for several years on the edition of
Vogue
magazine , signing iconic covers together.
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At Annie Leibovitz's induction ceremony, singer Patti Smith was also present and sang "Peaceable Kingdom", accompanied by her daughter.
Under the dome of the Institut de France, several works by the photographer had been installed, including the portrait of Demi Moore naked and pregnant, taken in 1991. A photo which “shocked the societal norms of the time, declared her colleague and friend Sebastiao Salgado.
(...) By exalting the beauty of pregnancy, Annie helped women feel better in their pregnant bodies.”
The photo of John Lennon naked, embracing Yoko Ono, the last taken during his lifetime, or that of Donald Trump in 2006 on the tarmac of an airport with his wife Melania, pregnant and in a bikini, were also on display.
Known for her ultra-slick portraits in the pages of Vanity Fair and Vogue, and before that in Rolling Stone magazine, Annie Leibovitz took advantage of this ceremony to show the most intimate side of her work, made up of photos of those close to her, including his three daughters and his parents.
“For me, photography is life as a whole (...) The truth is that photography was invented so that everyone could make images of themselves, of their family, of friends, of landscapes , things that make sense to them,” she added.
Dressed in a long jacket and cigarette pants, Annie Leibovitz declared that this day was “sincerely one of the great moments of (her) life”.
In her speech, the 74-year-old photographer, who lived for a time in Paris, paid tribute to the master Cartier-Bresson and to his late companion, the writer Susan Sontag, who died in 2004, whose life she shared from the very beginning. late 1980s.