Inspirational Photographers: Leibovitz and Natchwey

Annie Leibovitz (Source)

James Natchwey (Source)

How could these two brilliant photographers be compared to each other? One thing that they do have in common for sure is that did not miss their calling in life....

Photo Credit: Annie Leibovitz (Source)

It is hard to have a preference in either one of these photographers. Leibovitz's work is like a piece of jewelry - everything is just flawless. In fact, many of the people in her work are world known celebrities and some can even seem a bit too idealized. If Leibovitz's pictures are portraying the world as we would wish to see it, Natchwey, on the other hand, is depicting the part of the world that perhaps most of us would like to keep our eyes away from in our everyday lives....

Photo Credit: James Natchwey (Source)

The approuch the two photographer takes, however, are quite similiar. They both blend with the environment that they are in. Arnold Schwarzenegger, when he was getting his shots taken by Leibovitz, eventually forgot that there was someone with a camera in the room and started taking off his clothes. As a student of Visual Anthropology, I was amazed by how she manages to get so intimate with the peoeple she has just met. This also goes for Natchwey, in that he becomes apart of the caotic scences that he constatnly finds himself in. Often times I would go through my pictures and feel that they are not what I was initially seeing to through the lends - that somehow they seemed so unnatural. It dawned on me that in order to reveal the nature of things through photographs, I had to spend time and get to know them first. If only I had the ability to tear down the walls between my camera and the object, as Leibovitz and Natchwey do....