Annie Leibovitz. A Photographer’s Life 1990–2005
22 June 2011 – 18 September 2011
Exhibition location: Rooms ¹ 169 - 173, The Winter Palace

The State Hermitage Museum is delighted to announce that it presents the exhibition Annie Leibovitz A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005 in St. Petersburg, Russia, from June 21 through September 12, 2011. It forms part of the Hermitage 20/21 project, an ambitious program aimed at showcasing the best of contemporary art in the Hermitage and expanding the display of 20th century art.

The exhibition has been enjoying a record breaking tour in the United States and Europe. St. Petersburg is the first of two Russian venues for the exhibition. It will travel to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow. The exhibition has been a huge success in cities from New York to San Francisco to London, Paris, Berlin and most recently Sydney, Australia, where it has been attracting large crowds.

Annie Leibovitz is without a doubt one of the most celebrated photographers of our time. The exhibition brings together almost 100 iconic images of famous public figures together with personal photographs of her family and close friends. Arranged chronologically, they project a unified narrative of the artist’s private life against the backdrop of her public image "I don’t have two lives," Leibovitz says. "This is one life, and the personal pictures and the assignment work are all part of it."

At the heart of the exhibition, Leibovitz’s personal photography documents scenes from her life, including the birth and childhood of her three daughters, and vacations, reunions, and rites of passage with her parents, her extended family and close friends. The exhibition features Leibovitz’s portraits of well-known figures, including actors such as Jamie Foxx, Daniel Day Lewis, Demi Moore, Nelson Mandela, Scarlett Johansson, Al Pacino, Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt as well as artists and architects such as Richard Avedon, Brice Marden, Philip Johnson, Chuck Close and Cindy Sherman.

Featured assignment work includes searing reportage from the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s and the election of Hillary Clinton to the US Senate. There are also landscapes taken in Monument Valley in the American West. Annie Leibovitz has been making witty, powerful images documenting American popular culture since the early 1970s, when her work began appearing in Rolling Stone. She became the magazine’s chief photographer in 1973, and ten years later began working for Vanity Fair, and then Vogue, creating a legendary body of work. In addition to her magazine work, Leibovitz has created influential advertising campaigns for American Express, Gap, Givenchy, the Milk Board and the TV series The Sopranos.

The exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum on 20 October 2006 and has since toured in the United States to the San Diego Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In Europe it was seen at the Maison Europe'enne de la Photographie in Paris, the National Portrait Gallery in London. C/O Berlin, Alcala 31, Madrid, the Kunsthaus Wien in Vienna, as well as Fotografiska in Stockholm, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia.

The exhibition has been curated by Ekaterina Lopatkina, Curator of Contemporary Art Department, The State Hermitage Museum. A fully-illustrated book was published in English and German by Random House. The State Hermitage Museum published an additional catalogue accompanies the exhibition, which includes an introductory essay by Prof. Mikhail Piotrovsky, Director of the Museum, and essays by Ekaterina Lopatkina.

The exhibition is generously supported by Mrs. And Mr. Spas Roussev. The constant sponsors of the "Hermitage 20/21" project are "Coca-Cola Export Corporation", "Ilim Group", "Renaissance Construction".

The media sponsors of the exhibition are Afisha Magazine, ArtChronika Magazine, Echo of Moscow Broadcasting Company.