pilgrimage by annie leibovitz

The Niagara Falls in Ontario.


Sigmund Freud's couch in his study at 20 Maresfield Gardens in London.


A glass negative of a multiple-lens portrait of Lincoln made on Feb. 9, 1864, by Anthony Berger at the Brady Gallery in Washington, D.C.


Annie Oakley’s heart target from a private collection in Los Angeles, Calif.


The television set Elvis Presley shot in 1970, in a storage room at Graceland.


Handmade pastels in the O’Keefe Research Center in Santa Fe.

In the height of her financial troubles, Annie Leibovitz took a six-hour drive and stood mesmerized by the water of Niagra Falls, with her three children. The world-famous celebrity photographer extraordinaire (made famous for a naked John Lennon intertwined with Yoko on the cover of Rolling Stone, Demi Moore, pregnant and nude, on an issue of Vanity Fair and Bruce Springsteen’s denim-clad backside set against an American flag on his “Born in the U.S.A.” album cover, to name a few) was facing millions in debt, her career was in danger, her credit card was just rejected, and her hotel room was given away. Yet, she felt revived. She had a list! No assignments. No Miley.

With her kids, Leibovitz embarked on a road trip across the United States from 2009 to 2011, shooting meaningful, personal, historical mementos with a digital camera. She would go to Virginia Woolf’s house, her late partner Susan Sontag’s favorite. She would see Freud’s storied couch. She would find Emily Dickinson’s last surviving dress, Georgia O’Keeffe’s pastels, and the television Elvis shot a bullet through in 1970, hidden in a storage room at Graceland.

“I NEEDED to save myself,” says Annie Leibovitz, explaining what motivated her new book of photographs, “Pilgrimage.” “I needed to remind myself of what I like to do, what I can do.”

Triumphantly, her first ever all-digital exhibit has just opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and she released her book, Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage.

More after the jump!



A door at Georgia O’Keefe’s home in Abiquiu, N.M.


Emily Dickinson’s only surviving dress at the Amherst Historical Society in Amherst, Mass.


Virginia Woolf’s bedroom near Charleston, England

Sources and photos: flavorwire, NY Times & Washington Post