 On December 8th, 1980, Annie Leibovitz, celebrated photographer, went to the Lakota building in New York to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono for their forthcoming album. It was going to be covered in Rolling Stone. She'd been there a few days earlier taking some pictures but had an idea about capturing the intimacy between John and Yoko. Annie had first met John Lennon way back in 1970 when she was just a new photographer learning her way and being quite nervous and John had gone out of his way to make her feel relaxed and comfortable and that had informed the way that she'd photographed up until that point and there was you know there was a rapport between them so she felt able to you know ask John and Yoko if they wouldn't mind posing nude much like they'd done previously and Yoko was a bit hesitant about this idea she said look you know I'll do topless but that's as far as it goes John was quite fine and so Annie was kind of stuck she said look okay Yoko just you keep your clothes on and they did a couple of images and he showed John one of the Polaroids and he turned to her and said look wow this this image perfectly captures our relationship John cuddled into Yoko in almost a fetal position hopefully close because him totally you know nude. Before she left John turned to her and said look you know I know that Rolling Stone they just really wanted to have this about me but this is a joint album between myself and Yoko and I really want Yoko to be on the cover with me. So they arranged to go and see the transparencies later on and Annie went on her way and John went off to a recording studio and later that evening Annie got a recall saying that a person matching John's description had been admitted to Roosevelt Hospital with a gunshot wound and of course that was the fatal wound that ended up killing him. After this tragic event Rolling Stone were at somewhat of a loss of what to do they thought about putting your John just a picture that Annie had taken previously on the cover and then she said look you know John said to me that he wants both Yoko and himself on this cover and they looked through the images and they had this photograph which is now supposedly become iconic and they put it on the cover after checking with Yoko there was okay and she said absolutely fine please do you know put this on there and that kind of really cemented certainly I'm concerned Annie's place in a public consciousness a wider world beyond just the music and the politics that she's been photographing up until that point. Although these days Annie Libowitz is most known for her glamorous fashion and magazine photography her start was actually as a photojournalist in the late 1960s early 70s working for Rolling Stone she got a job there almost by accident you know under duress she was asked to go and show some of her work to to them in the hope of getting a job and that's where she cut her teeth on doing you know gigs like following the Rolling Stones around doing all sorts of things a world away from the fashion and celebrity portraiture that we see today her background in the arts of going to art school learning about painting and and absorbing the work of people like Robert Frank you know informed her photography and that's a series as a feeling that you see throughout her career my first introduction to Annie Libowitz was through her conceptual photography that I kind of went wow you know who is this person she was not quite as well known as she is today and I sort of looked at and go well this is this is really kind of cool work and I wondered about how she found these ideas how photographers like her came up with this there's a very cool book that I have called Annie Libowitz at work and she shares within these pages thoughts about photography some sort of insight I always found that extremely useful to to find out what a photographer's thinking she talks about these conceptual portraits at length saying that to begin with she was talking to Lawrence Shiller there's a very famous photographer and he was talking you know about having to think about a shoot before you go there and he used an example of an ejector seat that was designed to be fired from an aeroplane on the ground and he knew that you'd only have a couple of seconds to take pictures of this and rather than being like all the other photographers you know shooting just a thing going up in the sky he built this 150 foot tower put a 70 millimeter camera on top of that that was taking frames as this thing rocketed towards them so this is where Annie gets these ideas from that it's necessary to do your homework then if you're going to photograph a dancer to you know go watch them dance if you're she's photographing a musician to you know go listen to their their music it's within those moments that there is a raw nucleus of an idea that can surface one of the first photographs of Annie Liewitz is that I really you know became familiar with was the Blues Brothers you know Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and I always thought like this is pretty cool you know that they were always up for this and and it turns out that at the time they were taking themselves very seriously the Blues Brothers album had come out and they they were seeing themselves as more actors and serious musicians than comedians of course Annie kind of went oh you know it'd be quite fun to paint everybody blue and you know it's a somewhat on the nose play on words but it's an iconic photograph that you can't imagine it perfectly sums up everything and yeah John Belushi was not keen on this idea he I think under duress was you know painted blue and according to Annie he lasted about six frames and then stormed off in a half not seeing the funny side of it at all and didn't talk to Annie Liewitz for like another six months what I find really interesting about that story is that and he says that you know at the time she was young and cocky and didn't really think twice about the ramifications of what she was asking people to do and it's gone so far as like saying that she would have no idea these days how to actually go about these things so sometimes you know ignorance is bliss there is another photograph that I absolutely adore of Annie's and that's that one of Meryl Streep which she's got that that white face paint on you know the actor's kind of mask thing and she's pulling at her skin and I can she's great because Annie shares the story you know Meryl Streep was she was new she was just starting to become famous and I was feeling I think quite uncomfortable that the shoot wasn't really going very well in fact Meryl had postponed it twice already there's a lesson in here where Annie talks about you know chatting with Meryl Streep and Meryl going look you know I don't really want to be anybody I don't want to be me I just want to be nothing I just want to be an actor Meryl kind of noticed oh look there's there's lots of books about clowns around that there was some white face paint and that's where the idea was born of painting that white paint on two Meryl's face that she could be just the blank canvas just the embodiment of an actor you see there's a lot through Annie's conceptual work very certainly from this this period you know there's very famous photographs of whoopie Goldberg in the bath you know that was another wonder that just kind of it started in one place and ended up in another there's a wonderful photograph of Steve Martin which I adore I mean I love Steve Martin and I loved Annie Leibovitz's work from this period and she shares the story of going and talking to Steve that you know he's he's quite into art and he just bought this giant painting that he was extremely pleased about you know wow I really like this and he kind of sort of talked about like oh maybe I could be in the picture maybe I could be in that painting and Annie initially was a little bit reticent because she had tried this with Mick Jagger a few years ago trying to put him into a Turner sunset painting and apparently the makeup artists have spent four hours you know doing all the the the painting and all that kind of stuff to make him blend into this picture and and he lasted about 30 seconds when the shoot started and said I've had enough and I'm going so so you can imagine that you know Annie's a little bit not so sure but she gets a set painter down from from Disney and they say look what can you do the set paint he goes plop plop plop plop plop and does and a couple of brush strokes says that's it I'm done I'm off I have to go back to work now right and that picture is glorious those strokes and those brushes just work perfectly there are so many stories like this peppered throughout Annie's career of Sting walking around in the desert and just taking off all his clothes as Sting is want to do and Annie being reminded oh it reminds me those urban pen images of the those amazonian tribes where they they take themselves in in mud and you know going well let's let's try things like that of Bet Midler you know doing a movie about Janis Joplin the Rose and they're ordering all these roses for her to you know lie down in and only discovering when these roses are delivered a couple of hours before the shoot that they all still have their thorns attached I haven't been dethaw instead of frantically trying to get rid of all the thorns when I'm searching for images on on Annie Lieberwitz and reading articles about her and watching videos and and reading the comments on my own videos where Annie Lieberwitz features often there are accusations about how she has no talent that the work that she produces is only fated because of the people that are in it or the circumstances much like John Lennon's photograph that you know that really it she's nothing more than just a button presser especially these days she has a huge team setting everything up and she just swans in and takes a picture now I found when I was younger that I I felt similar I thought that you know I could take these photographs if I wanted to all I need is John Belushi you and Dan Akrow and Steve Martin access to them and and I could and I could just be as as famous and that idea that people have no talent I think is is an unfair accusation it's fine to not like a photographer's work but when you look at Annie Lieberwitz she has spent an entire career working at things speaking to photographers absorbing every single piece of information she has made no bones about the fact that she she knew nothing when she was getting started and yes maybe it was lucky that she turned up on the right day in the right kind of frame of mind at Rolling Stone that she was almost literally pushed through the door and she sat there worked at it absorbed the learnings and the teachings and the the the help that other photographers have passed on over time throughout her career that she's drawn on this this deep passion for photography I find her work can be sometimes superficial but other times it can be really powerful and at the very least it's always evolving it's always changing it may not always be to everybody's tastes but she isn't a photographer who has just stood still one of the photographers that Annie Lieberwitz has drawn inspiration from is Irvin Penn and if you'd like to know more about his fantastic photography and what he did to overcome an imposter syndrome check out this video over here thank you ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon