On my way out of San Francisco the other day, I spent an hour going through “Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005,” at the Legion of Honor. The show, originally organized by the Brooklyn Museum, ends its cross-country run in San Francisco on May 25. As I stood in front of an oval-office shot of George W. and his war cabinet, a tall socialite, who looked as if she’d been chauffered over from her pad in Pacific Heights, sidled up beside me and said, “Wouldn’t you like to choke each of them to death?” Then she gave me a second look and said, “Only in San Francisco, would I assume that a total stranger shares my political views.” I nodded toward Donald Rumsfeld, clenched my hands in a choke hold, and told her that I imagined that the same conversation had taken place in Brooklyn. One of the surprises of the Leibovitz show is the way it gets people who don’t know each other talking. Leibovitz’s gift is similiar to that of the great documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, who excels at allowing his subjects to present (and incriminate) themselves, with little commentary. Add to this the extraordinary access Leibovitz has had to the political leaders and cultural luminaries of our time, through assignments from Vogue, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair, and the result is a portfolio of iconic images, whose subjects we immediately recognize. It’s this collective shock of recognition that has strangers nodding to each other. There’s Nicole Kidman, ravishing in silvery gown and wash of spotlights; painter and film director Julian Schnabal, lounging in his paint-flecked striped pajamas; skeletal William Burroughs hung beside an anonymous Venetian who looks like his first cousin; Cindy Crawford, naked to the waist, adorned with her pet python; Generals Schwartzkopf and Powell, in full regalia, looking like a pair of grown-up boys playing dress-up. A woman in her thirties stood enraptured in front of a 1992 portrait of Daniel Day Lewis. The actor’s long, elegant fingers were ready to leap out of the frame. “The hands,” I said, and the woman sighed, “Yes,” as she imagined herself being touched by them.
