A celebration of the life and the work of the acclaimed photographer, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens gives plenty of detail on the latter but rather less insight into the former. There’s endless footage of her setting up photos - gangly, demanding but always charming. There’s a whole other documentary to be made just detailing her adventures on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1975. But, although she speaks warmly and openly about her long-term relationship with the writer Susan Sontag and about her family, you never really get a sense of where the inspiration comes from for her extravagant flights of fancy. Nor do you get more than a glimpse of the private woman off duty - perhaps because she rarely seems to put down the camera.
This documentary, directed by the photographer’s sister Barbara, has exceptional access. Interviewees include Hillary Clinton, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Yoko Ono and Arnold Schwarzenegger; photographs feature every celebrity under the sun. But it’s her documentary work - from early in her career and from a trip to Sarajevo during the siege in the Nineties - that is most exciting, given her reputation for controlled, meticulously posed portraits.
12A, 90 mins