ANNIE LEIBOVITZ: STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Hauser & Wirth is pleased to present ‘Stream of Consciousness’, a solo exhibition by Annie Leibovitz.

November 2, 2024 – January 11, 2025

‘Stream of Consciousness’ features both familiar images of iconic writers, performers and visual artists—Amy Sherald, Billie Eilish and Salman Rushdie are among them––and images that have never been exhibited publicly before. These include the Selldorf suite of photographs, which was created at the historic Frick Collection on East 70th Street in New York City just days after Leibovitz returned from a visit with Annabelle Selldorf at the architect’s home in Maine.

Selldorf had been charged with the sensitive task of the revered museum’s renovation and she had spoken to Leibovitz about the design challenges she was addressing. When they met again at the construction site in Manhattan, Leibovitz composed the four images that visitors will see first upon entering this exhibition.

‘Steam of Consciousness’ includes portraits of contemporary cultural figures such as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Stephen Hawking alongside images of landscapes, interiors and historical ephemera—Abraham Lincoln’s top hat and Elvis Presley’s bullet-riddled television. The associative juxtapositions show Leibovitz’s diverse range of subjects and ability to balance intimacy and theatricality, the exquisitely personal and the grandly universal. Her eye is guided by intuition and a preternatural sense of narrative.

‘Exhibitions of my work are usually arranged chronologically. The images tell a story shaped by time. But there are some photographs––Georgia O’Keeffe’s red hill, the portrait of Joan Didion in Central Park—that rhyme with photographs from other places, other times. They aren’t moored to the moment they were made. I keep returning to these images’ – Annie Leibovitz