Annie, Get Your Gals!
Can a New York portraitist capture the soul of Texas womanhood? Shoot, yes.
The book was a vision of women in America," says Annie Leibovitz of Women, her latest collection of photographs, "and I thought, 'Where can I properly approach a subject that's so big?'" Not surprisingly, one answer was Texas. "It's a miniature America," she says. "It had the breadth and variety and individuality I wanted." Sentiment also played a part: A military brat, she attended fifth and sixth grade in Fort Worth.
Enlisting the research assistance of fellow photographer Christina Patoski, a longtime resident of Fort Worth, Leibovitz cruised the state shooting a panoply of Texas women, from a gospel singer to a convicted murderer, from a Lowrider magazine beauty queen to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Says Patoski: "We had two shoots in Houston on the same day—one with socialites dressed to the nines and the other with a small-time-carny lady who lives in a really rough neighborhood. Two completely different subjects, but Annie treated them exactly the same."
