So, it’s been a while, but my summer class, work contract and exhibition are all finally over and I now have more of that super precious commodity called free time. Unfortunately, having no time has meant I haven’t seen a heck of a lot of art lately and am still feeling like I’m getting a handle on what it is that’s happening in the city that I’ve been missing out on. I’m hoping my Montreal vacation will help me out (seeing the Quebec Triennial and the new Sophie Calle show at DHC/ART in particular).
The one reliable point of entry into the artworld for me this summer, though, has been books. In particular, I recently bought Annie Leibovitz’s A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005 for Cait and have really been enjoying flipping through it whenever I have a moment. Aside from being totally won over by her slick and provocatively gorgeous celebrity photographs, I’m also consistently fascinated by her images of Susan Sontag, especially in the last days before her death.
Annie Leibovitz, Susan at the House on Hedges Lane, 1988This isn’t the kind of image I’m thinking of, but the ones of her illness and death seem to be completely unrepresented on the internet, which I guess speaks to how uncomfortable they make many viewers. We talked a lot about Leibovitz’s portraits in my summer course on photography and how those images of Sontag’s last days caused controversy when they were first exhibited and published. Especially because Sontag’s eldest son accused Leibovitz of exploiting Sontag’s death by photographing it.
I’m not sure where I stand on them personally. I think they’re beautiful and sad and touching, but also wonder if I’m titillated by the fact that they do seem a bit illicit. Like maybe they shouldn’t have been taken, or that if that was my mother dying in a hospital bed, I probably also wouldn’t want her portrait printed in a glossy coffee table book alongside portraits of Scarlett Johansson, Ellen DeGeneres and Jim Carrey.
But, at the same time, the lady was in a relationship with Leibovitz for a significant portrait of her life, up to and including her death, and I would think she would have known that photos would have been made of this part of their lives, like every other. Kind of like the whole Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair photo debacle, I guess I would have thought that everyone would have expected this kind of image making from Leibovitz (isn’t that why she’s so successful and popular as a celebrity photographer, for her ability to create images that are unusual and riveting, but also slightly provocative?).
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