Defining the Line for Portrait Photographers: What’s Art and What’s Not?
Let’s hash it out. We’ve all seen, heard, and dealt with Mileygate 2008. And although most of us are ready to forget it just as quickly as it has inundated our industry sphere, we must recognize that one of our own is undergoing unworthy media flagellation. As we all know, Annie Leibovitz is a world-renown American portrait photographer known for such images as the famous John Lennon and Yoko Ono Rolling Stone cover taken in 1980, as well as countless other celebrity portraits. Recently, Leibovitz photographed actress and singer Miley Cyrus for a spread in Vanity Fair magazine. The images produced from that shoot are the newest fodder for what has become a media upchuck of everything sensationalist and irrelevant. Leibovitz was lambasted by Disney, along with other media circuits denigrating the photographs as both provocative and mismanaged.
A photographer known for her close collaboration with subjects, it was no surprise when Leibovitz issued this statement: “I’m sorry that my portrait of Miley has been misinterpreted. Miley and I looked at fashion photographs together and we discussed the picture in that context before we shot it. The photograph is a simple, classic portrait, shot with very little makeup, and I think it is very beautiful.” Vanity Fair also defended the images, maintaining that “Miley’s parents and/or minders were on the set,” said a spokesperson for the magazine. The pictures are part of a full-length interview featuring the tween queen and her father, the country singer Billy Ray Cyrus who appears with his daughter in some of the photographs. A Disney insider told The New York Times that “unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines.”
In response to the media outrage, Miley Cyrus issued this response: “I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.” A starkly different tune than the one she sang a week earlier, praising Leibovitz’s artistic vision: “Annie took, like, a beautiful shot, and I thought it was really cool. That’s what she wanted me to do, and you can’t say no to Annie. I think it’s really artsy.”
However overblown this entire incident may seem in the grand scheme of things, it is necessary that we, as professionals, acknowledge the fact that we too are faced with similar issues in our own professional lives. Granted, we aren’t all photographing movie stars, but nonetheless: how do you gauge that fine line that separates what you deem art from what others might perceive as exploitative or even perverse? Can we learn anything from this media blitzkrieg befallen on an industry stalwart or is it all just one big waste of time?
– Tara Propper
May 7th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
You should be on “Dancing with the Stars” The tile of the article had nothing to do with the content, even worse, any reference to art was cowardly avoided. The article should have been called, “Let’s Rehash Another Overblown Story”
May 14th, 2008 at 11:08 am
The concept of “art’ is completely subjective. Annie Leibovitz has always inspired me. Personally, I found nothing wrong with the image. Today, the media loves to create forced controversy. Take a stroll through any museum displaying classic portraiture photography through out the years, and you’ll most likely see images similar in nature.