CMA displays works of legendary photographer
World famous photographer Annie Leibovitz opened her new show, “Pilgrimage,” at the Columbia Museum of Art last week. “Pilgrimage” is the culmination of two years of traveling around the United States photographing everyday effects of influential Americans.
The 78-piece collection does not feature any pictures of faces, a change of pace for Leibovitz, 64, whose celebrity portraits frequently run as covers for Vogue and Rolling Stone. The collection is homage to various people who influenced her illustrious career and portraits the items behind famous faces like Eleanor Roosevelt, Virginia Woolf, and Elvis Presley.
The photos are grouped by person and show obvious relics, like Lewis and Clark’s compass and more personal items, like the bed Henry David Thoreau slept on at Walden Pond. Each set is a miniature journey through American cultural history. Leibovitz captures the most intimate aspects of many influential Americans — Sigmund Freud’s couch, Louisa May Alcott’s journals and Georgia O’Keeffe’s handmade pastels.
She photographed Elvis Presley’s gravesite, the river where Virginia Woolf drowned herself and Annie Oakley’s riding boots. The photos offer insight to household names and show their possessions in the most intimate of settings.
Leibovitz visited many places that the everyday tourist can visit, like Niagara Falls, Gettysburg, and Graceland; however, she formed personal relationships with curators and the families of the two dozen American visionaries featured and gained access to many artifacts not available to the public.
Columbia is the only city in the southeast to receive the collection and the exhibit was “definitely one of the largest openings we’ve ever had” said Dickson Monk, a representative for the museum.
Annie Leibovitz was at the opening and led reporters through the exhibit while discussing each piece. Afterward, she met with four University of South Carolina photography students who followed Leibovitz’s Pilgrimage theme in their own photographs and exhibit titled “View From Here.”
The Columbia Museum of Art is located at 1515 Main Street and only $5 for students.