Interesting article on Annie Leibovitz, who photographed John Lennon just before his death. Not sure what to make of it, but I don't know Leibovitz's work well.

Indulge their narcissism: the Leibovitz trick to shooting stars

Stuart Jeffries
May 4, 2008

FIVE hours before John Lennon was shot dead in 1980, Annie Leibovitz photographed him naked. His arms and legs were wrapped lovingly, needily, around the fully clothed body of his wife, Yoko Ono. His lips pressed to her cheek, his eyes shut in bliss.

But that wasn't Leibovitz's original idea for the Rolling Stone cover. She had wanted him on his own, but Lennon insisted that his wife appear too. So Leibovitz suggested that the two pose together nude. Lennon obligingly began to strip, but Ono refused to take off her trousers. Without thinking about it much, Leibovitz recalled, she told Ono to keep all her clothes on.

"Then he curled up next to her and it was very, very strong. We took one Polaroid," said Leibovitz, "and the three of us knew it was profound right away." Lennon reportedly told her: "You've captured our relationship exactly. Promise me it'll be on the cover." It was, but not as planned: it appeared on the memorial issue for the murdered Beatle.

But what had Leibovitz captured? "You couldn't help but feel that she was cold and he looked like he was clinging on to her." Which seems unfair: I can see Lennon's clinginess, but not Ono's chilliness.

The story of Lennon's last photo shoot undoes some of the mystique of how Leibovitz gets her subjects to disport themselves in daft, degrading, mildly titillating or otherwise compelling poses: sometimes at least, she has responded on the hoof to her celebrity subjects' annoying demands. She doesn't create a moment but is responsive to it, realising that the thing she's after is right there. But most professional snappers would say they could realise that too if they only had the same access to exhibitionist celebs as Leibovitz has had in the past 40 years. They, too, could have got the Queen to look wistful in a crown.

To be fair, Leibovitz can do jaunty, contrived composition too. Her picture of Whoopi Goldberg in a bath of milk subverts the glumly pious Riefenstahl-Mapplethorpe black-meets-white aesthetic by sheer dint of Goldberg's joyfully cheeky open-mouthed pose.

What Leibovitz often does is capture a striking image that flatters the sitter into thinking it discloses something profound, when it doesn't. Maybe that's what her lover Susan Sontag meant when she told Leibovitz: "You're good but you could be better."

The rest here:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/.....3/1209235220196.html

She's an excellent photographer. And whilst it may be true that she does get to photograph celebs that like to play to the camera, she had to be good enough to get to that position in the first place.

I always think of the womb when i see this picture of John and Yoko , it's a very startling image .He looks like a manchild .
It's quite a profound picture i think .

Quoted from DaveRam

I always think of the womb when i see this picture of John and Yoko , it's a very startling image .He looks like a manchild .
It's quite a profound picture i think .

I wonder if he was just trying to provoke people, the way he did with the cover of Two Virgins?

I've never been a fan of Leibovitz's work, but that photo always left an impression on me. It freaks me out, really.

It's a brilliant photo on so many levels. I always forget it was only five hours before his death. That's unreal. My God, five hours later and he no longer existed. I wonder if it's difficult for Yoko to look at that picture. Or maybe she's happy they had that moment captured. I don't know.

I would assume both. Bittersweet.