In a New Volume Out This Fall, Annie Leibovitz Revisits Her Women
'This project was never done,' Annie Leibovitz once said of Women, the landmark book of portraits she created in 1999 with her late partner, Susan Sontag. Speaking to The New York Times nearly two decades later, Leibovitz made clear that the project—then touring the globe as an exhibition—wasn't meant to be finite. 'It's not one of those projects that will ever have an ending.'
Making good on that concept, this November, 25 years after its original publication, Women is returning in a new slipcased edition: a two-volume set from Phaidon pairing the original book with an entirely new companion volume of portraits made between 2000 and the present. Together, they offer a sweeping meditation on femininity, power, vulnerability, and the visual vocabulary we use to define all three.
Left: Susan Sontag; Right: A showgirl
Photo: Courtesy of Phaidon
The original Women was a deeply personal endeavor—not only due to Sontag's involvement (she penned the incisive essay that accompanied the imagery), but also because of the reverence with which Leibovitz approached her subjects. The portraits of Louise Bourgeois, Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Eileen Collins weren't simply about visibility—they were about legacy.
Sontag's text, first excerpted in Vogue in 1999, interrogated the very idea of a book of women's portraits, positing that no such effort for men would be received in the same way. 'But then a book of photographs of men would not be undertaken in the same spirit,' she noted. 'Each of these pictures must stand on its own. But the ensemble says, so this is what women are now.'
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