ANNIE LEIBOVITZ : STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

In Annie Leibovitz’s working life everything needs to be very organized. That’s maybe why her new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth New York has a dreamier feel. Called Stream of Consciousness - which is an apt title the year one celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist movement which valued stream of consciousness  - the exhibition breaks from the usual chronological order or conventional themes. Stream of Consciousness prefers to free associate, to meander, revealing Annie Leibovitz’s thought process. The show is, in some ways, a peek into her mind. Images made at different times or on different subjects can respond to each other. It includes still lives, portraits and landscapes: Abraham Lincoln’s top hat and newest Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, English theoretical physicist and Elvis Presley’s bullet ridden TV set, Edward Hopper’s childhood home as well as James Turrell’s Roden Crater. 

It’s not the first time Leibovitz associates images freely. In her 2017 show at Fondation Luma, in Arles (France), called Les Premières Années, 1970 - 1983 (“the first years”), she was showing a body of work made during a certain time period, when she was working at Rolling Stone magazine and shooting in black & white. The prints were pinned to the walls in some random order. It was disorienting, but it also felt very alive, full of an energy that is no longer here. 

In her Hauser & Wirth exhibition, Annie Leibovitz will also be showing images that she has never shown before. Just like, in her portraits of celebrities for Vanity Fair or Vogue, she is able to reveal something about her subjects, this exhibition will be revealing to the viewer something about this great artist who, like Richard Avedon, has transcended her medium to be recognized as one of the 21st Century’s preeminent artists.

~Jean-Sébastien Stehli 

Annie Leibovitz. Stream of Consciousness. Hauser&Wirth, 22nd Street. Until Jan. 11. hauserwirth.com