Photography as a way of using your voice

I photograph people. It allows me to have a point of view, and have a voice — Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz, Masterclass

Annie Leibovitz decided that she did not want to be a photojournalist because she wanted to have more of a say; to be conceptual rather than objective in her work. She sees herself as an artist, who uses photography as her medium.

With that said, she thinks photojournalism is some of the most powerful work being done today. When Leibovitz looks at the New York Times every day, she looks at what photographs were chosen, their placement, how they are used. When I look at the New York Times in the morning, I study the stories; headlines, ledes, structures, opinions, arguments, how they compliment or counteract each other. I’m ashamed to say that my eyes just flit over the photographs, hardly registering them — until now.

Leibovitz’s Masterclass made me look at the daily papers from a new perspective

One of the first assignments of Leibovitz’s photography masterclass is to look at and choose a photograph from a newspaper. Sure enough, there, above the fold on the front page of the New York Times was one that your eye could easily skip over, but was very telling if you stopped to look at it.

Five men from China’s Uighur community watch a small TV in the corner of a bare room. We can only see one man’s face.

Unlike the others, his gaze is turned away from the television and towards the door, where the light is coming from. There’s a tension in this look, the feeling that whatever drama is happening on TV can encroach upon the space of this very room at any moment. The picture captures a stark sense of place, community, and atmosphere — one of watching and waiting. At least, that’s what it communicates to me. The photograph tells as much of a story as the text around it.

You are storytelling in this work. And you have one story, and then something happens that changes the concept that you had — Annie Leibovitz

Photography is a way of discovery. Like poetry, you start off with one subject in mind, which then develops into something else. A week of learning with Leibovitz offered me new ways of seeing things — and not just the…