Essay: Introduction to Project

This project aims to bring the work of two major female photographers, Lauren Greenfield and Annie Leibovitz, into one medium. While both have many publications to their names, the specific focus of this project is the juxtaposition of Lauren Greenfield's book Girl Culture and Annie Leibovitz's Women.

These two women photograph in very different ways, even though at first glance their subject matter seems to be almost identical. In this project, their work is tied together under one overarching theme-the last statement made by Susan Sontag, a famous philosophical writer, in her essay that opens Women:

A photograph is not an opinion. Or is it? [1]

This is a question that can be perplexing in its simplicity, but causes an uneasiness as we think about it, especially in light of the barrage of media, including photographs, that we are exposed to on a daily basis. If a photograph is indeed an opinion, what power does that give the artists who produce the images? If it is not, why have photographs, for their history, had such an important place in our society?

Both books, Girl Culture and Women, are filled with photographs of females that force us to think of this question-are these photographs opinions? Even their titles and cover art give a hint into the images that are contained inside: the cover of Girl Culture is in purple, with pink and darker purple lettering, while Women is a neutral shade of tan with beige lettering. Perhaps at first unimportant, the covers whisper at what is to come. Though the adage "don't judge a book by its cover" might begin to ring in your head, we have already started to form our own judgments before even opening the books (hence the design for the introduction animation in the first section of the project).

In her essay closing Girl Culture, Lauren Greenfield wrote:

Girl Culture has been my journey as a photographer, as an observer of culture, as part of the media, as a media critic, as a woman, as a girl. . . . I cannot say exactly when I began this project. I was enmeshed in girl culture before I was a photographer, and I was photographing girl culture before I realized I was working on Girl Culture. [2]

Throughout her book, she documented the lives of girls exactly how they occurred-in bathrooms and bedrooms, on spring break and at strip clubs. She was a documenter of culture in all its harsh realities. She also interviewed several of the girls, and placed their stories next to their images, providing depth and intrigue to images that already leave those who see them wanting to know more.

Annie Leibovitz, however, captured women in mostly posed portraits. In an interview about Women she said,

The truth is, I thought I was doing journalism, but I really wasn't. . . . When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't true. What became important was to have a point of view. That's why I ended up using the title, "Portrait Photographer." In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view and to be conceptual with a picture. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative. [3]

Annie Leibovitz's photographs, because they are posed and controlled, sharply contrast with the bluntness and reality of those of Lauren Greenfield. The colors in her images are more muted then those in Girl Culture or they are in black and white, which gives them a certain beauty. While Susan Sontag's essay provides the opening for the book, the only other text lies in the back of the book, where there are short biographies of the subjects, which leaves the photographs to stand on their own throughout the book. Thus even though Annie Leibovitz also traveled around the country photographing women from all walks of life-famous actresses to street performers, and athletes to showgirls-the photographs by the two women often contrast each other, and this is especially evident when seen side-by-side. For this project, one image from each book is presented side-by-side in the image gallery (for a total of seven pairs), along with notes about and interviews with the girls and women in the books (when applicable and/or available). While a question is posed with each pair, consider Susan Sontag's question:

A photograph is not an opinion. Or is it?

Finally, more information about each of the photographers, such as biographies and interviews, can be found in the third section of the project ("Artist Information").

Laura Beals
FAH 189: Multimedia & the Visual Arts Final Project
Spring, 2005

[1] Sontag, S. (2000). A photograph is not an opinion. Or is it? In A. Leibovitz & S. Sontag, Women (pp. 18-36). New York, New York: Random House.
[2] Greenfield, L. (2002). Mirror, Mirror. In L. Greenfield, Girl Culture (pp. 149). San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books.
[3] Weich, D. (1999). Annie Leibovitz puts down the camera, talks. Retrieved April 21, 2005 from http://www.powells.com/authors/leibovitz.html.