Paul Nicklen: A Reverence for Nature
Standing in front of any of Canadian photographer Paul Nicklen’s large-scale images in the current exhibition at Hilton Contemporary, one cannot help but be totally…
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Annie Leibovitz Revisits Her ‘Women’ in New Fall Volume
“This project was never done,” Annie Leibovitz once said of Women, the landmark book of portraits she created in 1999 with her late partner, Susan Sontag. Speaking to The New York Times nearly two decades later, Leibovitz made clear that the project—then touring the globe as an exhibition—wasn’t meant to be finite. “It’s not one of those projects that will ever have an ending.”
Making good on that concept, this November, 25 years after its original publication, Women is returning in a new slipcased edition: a two-volume set from Phaidon pairing the original book with an entirely new companion volume of portraits made between 2000 and the present. Together, they offer a sweeping meditation on femininity, power, vulnerability, and the visual vocabulary we use to define all three.
The original Women was a deeply personal endeavor—not only due to Sontag’s involvement (she penned the incisive essay that accompanied the imagery) but also because of the reverence with which Leibovitz approached her subjects. The portraits of Louise Bourgeois, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Eileen Collins weren’t simply about visibility—they were about legacy.
Sontag’s text, first excerpted in Vogue in 1999, interrogated the very idea of a book of women’s portraits, positing that no such effort for men would be received in the same way. “But then a book of photographs of men would not be undertaken in the same spirit,” she noted. “Each of these pictures must stand on its own. But the ensemble says, So this is what women are now.”
That ensemble now expands. Since 2000, Leibovitz has continued to train her lens on women of exceptional presence and purpose, from world leaders and athletes to authors, artists, and activists. The second volume—designed as a visual and formal mirror of the first—presents more than 100 new portraits rendered in Leibovitz’s signature style: unguarded, precise, and emotionally immediate. In the second volume, newly commissioned texts from feminist icon Gloria Steinem and Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie form a generational dialogue on power, gender, and representation.
One of the new volume’s earliest portraits features Rihanna reclining in the Rococo splendor of the Ritz Paris. Heavily pregnant and wrapped in an oversized black coat, she stares coolly at the viewer, her jeweled belly chain drawing a line between defiance and maternal glamour. The image, originally made for Vogue’s May 2022 cover story, has since become a defining symbol of pregnancy reimagined: Rihanna is part goddess, part provocateur, entirely her own woman.
Elsewhere, Adichie is captured in a library in Columbia, Maryland. Seated alone behind glass, she wears a red-and-white-striped dress, the lines echoing the geometry of the room’s bookshelves and ceiling beams. The image feels meditative, a nod to the quiet authority of thought—and the solitude often required to sustain it.
Another standout is a portrait of Joan Baez. Barefoot and serene, she balances on a tree branch with her guitar, sunlight filtering through the canopy. It’s an image of retreat, resilience, and the still-radical proposition that aging does not render a woman invisible but more luminous.
And then there are the dancers—Judith Jamison, Dwana Smallwood—captured in a spread that speaks volumes about strength, lineage, and grace. Jamison, photographed in 1993, lifts her chin skyward, her braided hair cascading down her back in an image of quiet majesty. A muse and later the longtime artistic director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, she embodied generational artistry. On the facing page, meanwhile, Smallwood—another Ailey alum—is frozen mid motion in a pale satin gown, her limbs outstretched and commanding.
The new volume doesn’t just continue the original Women—it reframes it. The selection of subjects feels broader, more global, and more assertively intersectional. There are fewer formal studio portraits and more environments that reflect the sitter’s sphere of influence: Adichie in her library, Steinem at her desk, Shonda Rhimes mid production. “We were looking hard in 1999 for women CEOs,” Leibovitz has recalled. “Now, it seems that there really are many more women in high positions.” The shift is quiet but powerful: women not merely inhabiting spaces of authority but shaping them.
There’s no single narrative to extract, no singular image of what a woman must look like, think like, live like in the book. Instead, Women is a layered, ongoing portrait of progress—sometimes swift, sometimes halting, always unfinished. Just like the project itself.
Beyond the gallery, Annie Leibovitz is a dynamic keynote speaker who brings unparalleled insight into creativity, visual storytelling, and the business of culture. She offers audiences a unique perspective on leadership, innovation, and the power of images to drive connection and impact. To host Annie Leibovitz at your next event, contact WWSG.
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