ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: WONDERLAND
Studio 525 NYC
September 10 – September 15 2021
PRODUCTION
Annie Leibovitz: Wonderland is an immersive installation celebrating the photographer’s encounters with fashion across five decades. The pop-up exhibition features four large-scale LCD screen structures showcasing Leibovitz’s groundbreaking work at Rolling Stone in the 1970s to her work at Vogue and Vanity Fair in the 1980s, and through present day.
The implementation required the blending of digital and analog workflows to maintain the original gamut of Leibovitz's printed colors on customized displays in a way that married the tangible feel of her analog prints with the scale and detail of the ultra-high resolution video walls.
THE EXHIBITION
The presentation features more than 340 photographs, the majority of which were previously uncollected—including over 30 images never before published and more than 90 images that have not been seen since their original magazine publication. Visitors will discover Leibovitz’s most ambitious fashion shoots—including looks by designers such Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent, and Rei Kawakubo—joined by portraits of a wide and diverse range of icons: from fashion designers such as Stella McCartney and Karl Lagerfeld to athletes Carl Lewis and Serena Williams, and artists John Currin and Matthew Barney.
‘Looking back at my work, I see that fashion has always been there,’ Annie Leibovitz observes in the preface to Wonderland. ‘Fashion plays a part in the scheme of everything, but photography always comes first for me. The photograph is the most important part. And photography is so big that it can encompass journalism, portraiture, reportage, family photographs, fashion. . . . my work for Vogue fueled the fire for a kind of photography that I might not otherwise have explored.’
Annie Leibovitz is one of the most important photographers of our time, a Library of Congress Living Legend whose work has inspired for more than five decades. With her distinctive style and sharp eye, she transforms her subjects—ranging from actors and activists to musicians and athletes—into cultural icons.
Presented by Hauser & Wirth and Phaidon