Women

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Summary: I'm not Thomas, I'm his daughter, he used my computer to ord
Review: er from Amazon and Now His Name is Stuck on My Account

So much for a title.

Annie Leibovitz's book requires no words. Sorry, Susan, I didn't read your text. The best way to enjoy Annie's photos is to set aside your search for a defining message about women. There isn't one. Women are varied creatures just like the rest of humanity and nature.

Don't you just love looking at them? Don't wish you could get a closer look? Don't you wish the interesting one's would stand in just the right light so you could get a better look? Didn't you always think Hillary C. was beautiful, but you didn't know why?

Thank you Annie Leibovitz for taking the interesting women and standing them in a beautiful light and binding them in a huge book so we can stand and stare as long as we want.

Enough said.

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Summary: The beauty, dignity & grace of modern women captured
Review: WOMEN makes a powerful statement on many levels. On the most obvious level these are great photographs taken by a master that are beautifully displayed in full-page and two-page formats. 63 black and white and 59 color photographs from Annie Leibovitz, who is one of our most famous and popular portrait photographers, are a visual treat.

Each picture is accompanied by a simple caption: the subject's name, profession, and where the picture was taken. All seem to have been taken in 1999, the year the book was published. The captions define the subjects while the pictures open a window into their world.

Leibovitz makes a statement on the status and condition of women in our society in this collection of photographs. This Leibovitz does well. She is a photographer of the rich and famous and these women are well represented in this collection. There are 12 actresses, 7 artists, 6 musicians, 6 writers, 4 performance artists, 3 First Ladies, 3 CEOs, 2 poets, 2 dancers, 2 Supreme Court justices, 2 comedians, 2 models, a general, a Secretary of State, a Cherokee chief, an opera singer, and an astronaut represented in the book. But everyday working women are also well represented. A waitress, a maid, a dragster driver, a police woman, a sewing machine operator, 2 teachers, soldiers, coal miners, farmers, restaurant customers, debutantes, cheerleaders, doctors, scientists, and activists also share these pages. Athletes are also well represented. Young women (students, a choir, and all-girl gang members) share the pages with older women. Sisters are photographed together and mothers with their children. What is revealed is the diversity and richness of women.

A set of photographs at the end of the book shows two views of each of four Las Vegas showgirls. Each is pictured in color in their stage costumes opposite a black and white photo of them out of costume. The theme of these seems to be the comparison of the natural vs. the adorned or crafted image of woman. All the other women in the book are represented by one image.

At the end of the book there are six pages where a brief biography of each subject is given. These are valuable background for each picture giving us a better look into the lives of the subjects.

The essay by Susan Sontag discusses the meaning of photographing women and the messages received by viewing pictures of women. She devotes a lot of her discussion to the role of female beauty in society. Its a wonderful essay to read and to accompany these photographs. These images of the beauty, dignity, and grace of modern women captured by one of our master photographers are inspiring and thought provoking. Indulge yourself and spend some time with this great book.

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Summary: A moving and exceptional book
Review: This is definately my favorite book, and one I enjoy giving to special women friends. Annie Leibowitz has managed to capture the full spectrum of women, from the subdued and simple to the succesful and sophisticated. It is a moving book and a celebration to women's individuality and uniqueness. I warmly recommend it.

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Summary: Redefining Women: More Roles and New Expressions of Beauty
Review: This book deserves more than five stars. I think it would make a wonderful gift for any young woman starting to decide what it means for her to be a woman.

As Susan Sontag tells us in the essay, "Each of these pictures must stand on its own. But the ensemble says, So this is what women are now -- as different, as varied, as heroic, as forlorn, as conventional, as unconventional as this."

This exciting book will challenge everyone's concept of what women are and can be in their roles. Many viewers will be uncomfortable with those poerful challenges, while others will find the images to be mentally liberating. "Ambition is what women have been schooled to stifle in themselves, and what is celebrated in a book of photographs that emphasizes the variety of women's lives today," according to Susan Sontag.

Underneath this conceptual work comes a theme built around a striking new sense of what beauty means in a woman, and it has nothing to do with youth and physical perfection. Ms. Leibovitz wonderfully captures what I think of as "soulful" beauty in this remarkable collection of new photographs done for this book. Interestingly, her most beautiful "soul pictures" come of people who are the oldest and have the most lined faces -- like her mother and sculptress Louise Bourgeois. I fell in love with all women, more than ever before, from being with these images. They reminded me of the beauty in the fundamental connection we all have to women, and women have to the fundamentals of life.

As Susan Sontag points out, "Such a book . . . is also about women's attractiveness." "Forever young, forever good-looking, forever sexy -- beauty is still a construction, a transformation, a masquerade." Only occasionally will you see an image of traditional concepts of beauty. The rest as avatars of what beauty may well come to mean for our children.

As you can tell from the quotes I have used, Susan Sontag's essay is a wonderful conversation with the images that helps the reader appreciate their potential. "It is for us to decide what to make of these pictures. After all, a photograph is not an opinion. Or is it?" Clearly, Ms. Leibovitz is expressing opinions with these photographs, but the viewer may often perceive them like a Rorschach test, with the response reflecting more about the viewer than about the image.

One of the most interesting sequences involves three so-called "show-girls" who perform in Nevada casinos. You see them first as ordinary women with tiredness and care lines. Next, they are revealed in their painted, plumed performing personas. You have to look twice, and then a third time, to realize that these are the same women. How more eloquently can you say that conventional concepts of beauty are only skin deep? Or in this case, appearance is only as deep as the cosmetics and costumes used.

Other photographs are revealing in other ways, some almost like a peep show. These are designed to show the reality behind the image, just as the Nevada women's pictures do. For example, you'll see famous ex-models and actresses in very unglamorous, but important women's roles, such as Jeri Hall nursing her baby.

But above all, these women are vibrantly alive. One of my favorites is an underground shot of women in a coal mine with other miners. The women's faces positively glow with energy. You can see the intelligence, the commitment, and the courage they each have. In this sense, the book is about all humanity, not only women.

After you have finished with viewing the photographs and considering the essay, I suggest that you think about your own life, whether you are a woman or a man. What is intelligent, committed, and courageous about what you are or do? How could you be even more so? How could you transfer that vision to another person? How would photographs or an essay help?

Take a look, and see what you think!

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Summary: Image as Everywoman
Review: Fiction is my preference when writing book reviews, because I love the complexity of words, stories, and the vagaries of human nature with its endless permutations. But when I received Leibovitz's astonishing compilation of photographs as a gift, I thought I might attempt an impression of page after page of females, as seen through the professional eye of one of the most important photographers of our generation.

Who has not gazed in awe at Leibovitz's unusual perspective, the beautiful made even more so? But I want real women with wrinkles and dirt under their fingernails, the kind of women overlooked in the rush to worship human perfection. I want to see if there is a balance, not just the too thin, too gorgeous, too self-indulgent. In that regard, I believe Women contains a preponderance of well-groomed elegance, albeit impressive, for instance a breathtaking portrait of Gwyneth Paltrow and her mother, Blythe Danner. This particular image contrasts a young woman in the blush of her feminine power with the graceful progression of years that adds to a woman's complex attraction. To be sure, there are folios of celebrities, socialites, all those who live in the rarified strata of entitlement.

While not as numerous, the presentation of real women like me, those who inhabit my world, are so powerful as to diminish the bland compositions of society's darlings. The studies of abused women jump off the pages, eyes glazed, the immediacy of domestic violence tattooing their faces, staring into a future devoid of hope; a remarkably insightful photograph of Ellen DeGeneris, virtually unrecognizable under a layer of cracked white greasepaint; two pre-adolescent girls in the back of a pickup truck, displaying a row of leggy blonde Barbie's, with Ken in a faux high school letter jacket, his plastic Prom Queen sporting a crown atop hair that cascades down the length of her body; three young Latino women glare accusingly at the lens, displaying gang colors with pride, ambiguously dangerous; the lines of age score lived-in faces, eyes shadowed by years of struggle, etched finally by the exhaustion of daily survival. For me, these pictures contain the essence of womanhood, untainted by ubiquitous vanities.

In all, Leibovitz "sees" these women, their strengths, frailties and vulnerabilities. This series of images is a walk through the multi-hued, textured world of women, esoteric, generous, often brutally honest and unflinching. Luan Gaines/2004.

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Summary: Just a name
Review: Although the idea of this book is worthwhile, I am amazed to find so many of the images out of focus. She is supposed to be a fine photographer, but maybe it is this title that has allowed her to feel okay with displaying such poor examples of portraits. It seems she rushed through the work just to get the book published as I don't sense that she put too much heart into the work.

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Summary: Very Enlightening
Review: I loved the book "Women," this book not only gave information on what all these amazing women do for a living, but it showed the pictures of them at work. A lovely tribute to WOMEN all over the world!

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Summary: Worth looking through
Review: I have owned this book for a couple of years now, and it still sits on my coffee table. (This coming from someone who holds a bacholor of fine arts degree and a minor in art history and an almost-minor in photography). This book has clarity in its thesis of women from differing backgrounds and walks of life, while still holding to the tether that regardless of status, there's a common sense of self to those photographed. It's also a good sized book, so if this happens to be on sale, snap it up. It's always enamored any who has looked through it in my livingroom.

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Summary: Disturbingly Beautiful
Review: There are a wide variety of women represented in this book, a cross section of society, photographed with the unique eye of the great Annie Lebovitz. There are the typically beautiful celebrities, average women on the street, and even a naked, bearded lady. Nothing about this collection is boring, and every page reveals something new. Annie Lebovitz is not afraid to take chances with her subject matter, and it shows. She is not the typical celebrity photographer, having gotten her start in rock and roll. This book celebrates women in all forms and stations in life, and is an absolute delight.

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Summary: Beautiful and moving
Review: We (my wife and I) have given this book as a gift several times. The photography is of course fantastic, but the collection of subjects is even better. So moving, so touching, an eloquent sense of artistic observation without any air of challenge or defiance. Fabulous!