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Annie Leibovitz

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Anna-Lou Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer best known for her engaging portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses. Leibovitz's Polaroid photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, taken five hours before Lennon's murder, is considered one of Rolling Stone magazine's most famous cover photographs.

The Library of Congress declared her a Living Legend, and she is the first woman to have a feature exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery. Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on October 2, 1949, Anna-Lou Leibovitz is the third of six children of Marilyn Edith (née Heit) and Samuel Leibovitz. She is a third-generation American. Her father was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force of Romanian-Jewish heritage, and her mother was a modern dance instructor of Estonian-Jewish heritage. 

The family frequently moved with her father's duty assignments, and she took her first pictures when he was stationed in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. Leibovitz's passion for art was born from her mother's engagement with dance, music, and painting. While attending Northwood High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, she became interested in various artistic endeavors and began to write and play music.

Leibovitz attended the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied painting with the intention of becoming an art teacher. She had her first photography workshop at school and changed her major to photography. The work of Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson inspired her. For several years, she continued to develop her photography skills while holding various jobs, including a stint on a kibbutz in Amir, Israel, for several months in 1969.

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