By Kim Malcolm, KERA 90.1 reporter
Dallas, TX – It's not too often you'll see rap artist Lil' Kim hanging out with two bullriders from the Alamosa All-Girl rodeo in Colorado. But here they are, coexisting very nicely, at the Annie Leibovitz photography exhibit called "Women."
That mix is characteristic of the show, which draws from the book of the same name, published three years ago. Leibovitz is perhaps the best-known celebrity photographer of our time, and there are many familiar faces here, culled from 30 years of work for publications like Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.
But not all are well known. Women's Museum exhibit director Victoria Montelongo takes a visitor on a tour, and stops in front of the biggest image of the show, a confident woman in an orange flight suit who towers above the dark horizon.
Victoria Montelongo, Exhibit Director, Women's Museum: This is Eileen Collins, space shuttle commander, Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas. And this image is one that the museum has chosen to be representative of this exhibit because it's just ... amazing. She's such a figure I think for young girls to look at and say, "I can do that, too."
That sense of dramatic composition and technical prowess is what Annie Leibovitz is known for. But photography professor Debora Hunter of SMU thinks she's also got a great talent for getting the best out of her sitters.
Debora Hunter, photography professor, SMU: The sitters have to trust the photographer, give them eye contact, because the photographer - and certainly most of the people in this book know - the photographer is the powerful one in these settings. You have to trust they won't make you look bad.
Many famous women in the show have trusted Leibovitz, including Elizabeth Taylor, Oprah Winfrey, and Martha Stewart. But it's the anonymous faces that Leibovitz finds just as interesting, perhaps more so.
Hunter: One of them is a photograph of a woman, and her title is retired chiropractic assistant, Beach Patrol Headquarters, Miami Beach, Florida. Well, all I can conclude from looking at the picture is that she's not been one of the great achievers in our world. And yet, Annie is fascinated by her face, because she has intelligence in her face, curiosity, and it's those photographs that tell us something about Leibovitz.
Viewers seem to pick up on that sympathy. Carla Wilson visited the Women's Museum for the first time, to see the exhibit, and was moved by the portraits of the unknown women, like Osceola McCarty, a washerwoman and philanthropist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Carla Wilson, visitor, Women's Museum: You can see all their life in their face. It tells their whole life, and everything they do, right in their face. There are so many things women have done, so anonymously, and I think it's real important.
It's a compliment to Leibovitz that in the end, visitors to the exhibit come away with a sense of learning more about what women have achieved and aspire to, rather than the photographer's point of view. And on that score, Hunter thinks the show proves Leibovitz is the chronicler of our time.
Hunter: Years from now, our National Portrait Gallery will want to have major examples of her work, if not her whole archives. And just the comprehensiveness of it is really remarkable.
"Women," a collection by Annie Leibovitz, is at the Women's Museum in Fair Park. The show runs till January 5, 2003. For KERA 90.1, I'm Kim Malcolm.
To contact Kim Malcolm, please send emails to kmalcolm@kera.org.