Annie Leibovitz
American photographer (born 1949)
Anna-Lou Leibovitz ( LEE-bə-vits; born October 2, 1949) is an American portrait photographer best known for her portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken five hours before Lennon's murder, is considered one of Rolling Stone magazine's most famous cover photographs. The Library of Congress declared her a Living Legend, and she is the first woman to have a feature exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery.
Leibovitz was a student in the 1970s when her photos were published for the first time: pictures of Vietnam War protesters in Israel, taken on assignment for Rolling Stone, one of which landed on the cover. Since then, she has captured film stars, politicians, athletes, royalty and artists for features and cover stories in other major publications, including Vanity Fair, Vogue and Time.
Early life and education
Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on October 2, 1949, Anna-Lou Leibovitz is the third of six children of Marilyn Edith (née Heit) and Samuel Leibovitz. She is a third-generation American. Her father was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force of Romanian-Jewish heritage and her mother was a modern dance instructor of Estonian-Jewish heritage. Her love for photography began at a young age when her father gave her a camera. The family moved frequently with her father's duty assignments, and she took her first pictures when he was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Annie Leibovitz” as american photographer (born 1949). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q225283. VIAF identifies the subject as 85042346. The Library of Congress control number is n83025141. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “Annie Leibovitz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.