2009 Infinity Award: Lifetime Achievement

Annie Leibovitz began her career as a photojournalist for Rolling Stone in 1970, while she was still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her pictures have appeared regularly on magazine covers ever since, and distinguished body of work encompasses some of the most well-known portraits of our time. She became Rolling Stone’s chief photographer in 1973. By the time she left the magazine, she had shot 142 covers and published photo essays on scores of stories, including her memorable accounts of the resignation of Richard Nixon and of the 1975 Rolling Stones tour. At Vanity Fair, and later at Vogue, she shot portraits of actors, directors, writers, musicians, athletes, and political and business figures, as well as fashion photographs, expanding her collective portrait of contemporary life. Pictures from the first 20 years of her career were collected in a retrospective book and exhibition, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs 1970–1990. The exhibition was organized by ICP in association with the National Portrait Gallery. More recently, A Photographer’s Life, 1990–2005 brought together her assignment and personal work in a book and an exhibition that opened at the Brooklyn Museum. In 2008, she published Annie Leibovitz at Work, a first-person commentary on her career.