Through theLENS

Vanities/Books

In her new book, ANNIE LEIBOVITZ showcases five decades of singular fashion photography

Madison Reid

SINCE BECOMING ONE of Vanity Fair s first contributors at its relaunch in 1983, Annie Leibovitz has helped define the look and spirit of this magazine. Wonderland (Phaidon), her latest monograph, is filled with an array of commissions for V.F. (from the beginning, she writes, "a legendary world where photographers were recognized as artists"), Vogue, and other publications, shot between 1972 and 2021. We see supermodel Natalia Vodianova as Alice in the proverbial book title, a pregnant Serena Williams swathed in a billowing orange caftan, Nicole Kidman circa Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and Rihanna, glamorous beside a siren-red car in the streets of Havana. "Fashion has always been there," Leibovitz writes of her more-than-50-year career, "it is the driving force in a portrait—whether it is Jerry Garcia in a black T-shirt, or Patti Smith in the much-imitated style that has endured for decades, or the Rolling Stones. Fashion plays a part in the scheme of everything, but photography always comes first for me."