Corcoran's Parting Shot

"The artistic process is still about seeing. . . . As you go out in the world, keep in mind the possibilities," photographer Annie Leibovitz tells Corcoran graduates. (By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
Buy Photo

Williams became fascinated by subcultures and people with lives on the fringes. She did long documentary projects about a cult in rural Virginia and vagabonds in Denmark, and she photographed sadomasochists in Northeast Washington. She learned to keep her eyes open, take risks, be more accepting.

Her photographs, along with Anthony's video and other senior projects, are on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

The art school students were also exposed to another side of Leibovitz.

The photographer, who is best known for her work at such magazines as Vanity Fair and Vogue, in addition to Rolling Stone, and for major ad campaigns, is sometimes dismissed by artists and students as too commercial, too focused on celebrities.

She has created controversy with her photos, including a recent Vanity Fair portrait of Miley Cyrus, the star of Disney's "Hannah Montana," that some found too provocative for a 15-year-old girl.

Paul Roth, Corcoran's curator of photography and media arts, said he thinks some people judge Leibovitz's commercial success from the aesthetic perspective of fine arts. But photography is a democratic medium, he said.

"It was created to put image-making in the hands of everyone," Roth said.

Leibovitz's success doesn't make her less legitimate as an artist, Roth said. "She's trying to make photographs that people will see, to speak to a very large audience on the biggest of stages," he said.

Williams and Anthony gained a different view of Leibovitz when they helped with the installation of her show at the Corcoran Gallery of Art last winter. The exhibit told the story of her life through photographs, combining her portraits of movie stars with small black-and-white prints of her parents, the children she had late in life and the death of her companion Susan Sontag.

A few students helped pin up hundreds of images meant to evoke the barn where Leibovitz created storyboards to edit photos for a book about her life, with intimate pictures of Sontag sleeping, Leibovitz's newborn daughter, her mother dancing, her family at home in Silver Spring.

The students were surprised and captivated by a moody shot of an octopus floating inside a tank, nothing like anything they had seen by Leibovitz, Anthony said.

Yesterday, Leibovitz told the graduates to stay close to the things they care about -- the things that matter. And to be ready for all the possibilities out there. "Sometimes you get things you never even imagined. When you go out into the world, maybe you see something that hasn't been seen in quite that way before." Maybe you'll explain something, she said, "maybe you'll tell us a story. Maybe you'll stir things up, like Genevieve. Whatever you do," she finished, "it matters."

Today, the graduates have to start concentrating on finding jobs in the art world. But for one day, at least, they could enjoy the larger-than-life Leibovitz style. They laughed as Cocco dropped her robe and finished the speech, shouting, in superhero-style underpants and a red cape. They listened to a rock star of the art world tell them to have a point of view and believe in it.

And then Williams and Anthony and all the rest celebrated in the formal marble halls of the Corcoran gallery, drinking champagne, surrounded by their own artwork.