see saw a zine about Patti Smith, Annie Leibovitz, and the world through their lenses
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preface Despite the loudness of their work, aspects of Annie and Patti come to you in quiet ways. I liked that a lot. I didn’t know what to make of the assignment, but I felt my way slowly through their work and their lives and I came to know them as people of nuance. Having a personal attachment to black and white photography, I latched on to the monochrome snapshots from each artist as a window into their world: no additional color as distraction, just content through their lenses, as they saw fit. My own assumptions and apprehensions about their characters stemmed from a knee-jerk interpretation of an imbalance in public and private life. A celebrity 4
photographer! A rock star! I wasn’t eager to delve further. But no; in between the lavish sets, camera flashes, and lyrics belted into mics, the two ladies exhibited a fascinating modesty—gentle on both parts and grounded in humble beginnings that have never left them. And I think it was especially the fact that, regardless of the possibilities of their world views being altered a thousand times over by simply being in the tumults of stardom, the way they see has not been tinted darkly. While there were and are so many sets of eyes on their persons, they themselves remain active seers through frames built from empathy and curiosity established at the outset of their lives.
First there is Patti: lighthearted, child-like, imbuing wonder in everything; rooted in a talismanic attachment to objects that still held the essence of people past. As such her photos dwell with an almost tangible attentiveness and endearment on various small moments. And just as her tiny polaroids carry over an intrinsically personal, individualized nature, the feelings channeled into them become accordingly concentrated. With Patti—the self-proclaimed eternal 12-year-old who cries at the sight of a Cy Twombly because she can sense the chalk in his hands— the smallest of things can be given the greatest of significance.
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Where Patti goes deep, Annie is vast. Her perceptual scope is illimitable, and the attentiveness to small things she shares with Patti finds additional breadth through carefully collected ethnographic experiences. This level of consideration entwined with years of engagement with a host of big personalities has afforded Annie’s photographic work (especially her black and white shots) a certain gravity that is altogether cognizant and poignant. So it is that I became familiar in my own way with two female artists who at their core are products of synthesis and human connections. It was a pleasure to weave a thread 6
of understanding through their words and their work. The result is a small zine which hopefully speaks with the same calm tone of voice with which they so often relay their visual sensitivities. Literally a lens, see saw travels through Annie’s views into Patti’s, meeting in the middle and conveying the fluidity with which the two have managed to ride life’s many fluctuations. Whether it be a snap of a stone cupid’s doleful stare, a loved one peering out from behind covers, or the slippers of a dear friend, Annie and Patti have shown themselves to be minds that inhale the world deeply but their exhales are tacitly soft.
annie leibovitz
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“Mobility is like, my goal. As long as I can move, as long as I can keep moving, I’m happy.”
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“ I learned very early on that something that wouldn't seem like it was anything would be something, and I enjoyed that aspect of it, so much. I never liked to presume something about a story or a person until I got there.� 11
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“ In order to be the best possible photographer of what it is that I’m in, right now, I really have to be in it. It has to be around me. Like, you know, that is the best kind of photography, is what is around you. You become a part of it.” 13
“ I don’t have two lives. This is one life.”
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“I didn’t see the shot that she picked until it came out, and I remember looking at the picture and thinking: “Is that what I looked like?” ‘Cause I looked at it, and the person that I saw I wasn’t yet familiar with, but, as I’ve evolved as a human being I’ve come to know the person that she saw in the shot.”
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“Each photograph is like a diary entry in my life. I can recall the atmosphere and what motivated me to shoot it. I took a picture of Susan Sontag’s grave for Annie Leibovitz the day after Susan’s funeral. It was very cold and her grave was covered with white petals. Annie mourned the loss of Susan deeply, and when I look at the picture I think of them both.”
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“ Perfection has never been my beat.”
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“Life isn’t some vertical or all of these things are potentially horizontal line. You have your beautiful. The IC’s bit of the own interior world, and it’s not sky, the Empire State Building, neat. Therefore the importance the street, your feet as they’re and the beauty of music, sound, walking, the texture of your skin; noise…. When you go outside layer after layer after layer and you walk on the street, of simple human existence. and you’re hearing traffic, you’re And we feel and sense and see hearing people taking, children things simultaneously, y’know. laughing, birds chirping, someone You’re walking through the going by with a boom box; interior of your own mind mind Hundreds of different sounds, which is a ‘nother whole jungle.” 22
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“Peter Pan I cherished the most because that was the atmosphere that I most lived in. And really, I thought it was possible because it was in a book, that we didn’t have to grow up. And when I was very small, I decided that I didn’t want to grow up, that I would stay about 10 or 11, and that was good enough for me. Actually, I was heartbroken to find out that we didn’t have a choice. I thought that we were just 24
put on earth, and we could decide what happens in our life. I’ve never let go of that feeling, y’know, I’ve never really felt that I’ve grown up.”
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“ I knew there was stuff inside me that could flower. Maybe it would really ruin me. Maybe I’d feel really shitty about it, but at least it would come out.”
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Smith, Patti, ed. Susan Talbott. Patti Smith: Camera Solo. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Print.
Leibovitz, Annie, ed. Mark Holborn. A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005. Italy: Conti Tipocolor, 2006. Print.
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Susan Sontag’s Grave, Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris, 2005.
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Mexico, 1989.
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Berlin, 1990.
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Workspace, NYC, 2002.
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Robert’s Slippers, 2002
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Garland, Moscow, 2007
12 Susan with Richmond Burton, Hedges Lane, Wainscott, Long Island, 1988.
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“Patti Smith.” Photograph. n.d. Patti Smith photo exhibit offers peek at rock icon’s world. CBC News. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
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Photograph by Susan Sontag. Hotel Gritti Palace, Venice, December 1994.
16 Patti Smith, Vandam Street studio, New York, 1996.
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