Corcoran's Parting Shot
Photographer Leibovitz Tells Graduates To Have a Viewpoint -- and to Stick by It

By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 25, 2008

Long before they began studying photography at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Holly Williams and Aimee Anthony knew about Annie Leibovitz.

Williams, as a youngster, leafed through a book of Leibovitz photographs that was in her home. Leibovitz portraits inspired Anthony when she began learning to use a camera.

And when Genevieve Hilton Cocco, the student speaker for the school's commencement, approached the lectern, she turned to the honorary-degree recipient at her side and said, "Hi, Annie Leibovitz!" Then, in a giggling mock aside to the audience: "She totally just said 'Hi' to me!"

Yesterday, the 85 Corcoran graduates assembled in black gowns and caps (some decorated with splatter paint or dangling anime) at DAR Constitution Hall to hear from an artist who is as famous as the celebrities she photographs.

It's not an easy thing, graduating from art school and launching into the real world; Williams and Anthony are both worried about finding jobs. The experience of Leibovitz, who began working for Rolling Stone and shot her way straight to success, is rare.

Leibovitz told the graduates of Corcoran to keep their eyes open.

"The artistic process is still about seeing. Things don't stop unfolding in front of you. As you go out in the world, keep in mind the possibilities," she said.

The photography majors, in particular, leave school with a new sense of perspective.

"Everything starts to look different through the lens," Anthony said.

The best thing about her education, she said, was the exposure -- to new ideas, new techniques, new artists.

The work of Leibovitz, Richard Avedon and other commercial photographers is usually the first thing photography students see, Anthony said, the first thing that gets them excited about the field. At school, Anthony learned about edgier, lesser-known artists, and she experimented with color and interactive pieces .

For her final project, Anthony stacked hundreds of photographs and videotaped gallery visitors peeling them off, one by one, to take home. The first photo to go was the eye in a huge portrait, and the images kept changing as photos were removed. A man pulled away the final photo after hesitating briefly.

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.