Little Orphan Annie

Do you think that photography is art? I do. I love photography. I also think that it may be the hardest art form to succeed at because there is so much competition. Anybody with a few thousand bucks burning a hole in their jeans can get their hands on a pretty much state of the art set up and millions of people around the World do. You don't even need a dark room anymore, just access to a halfway decent computer and photoshop.

I think Annie Leibowitz is a good photographer, at least as far as portraiture goes. Have you ever seen that picture of John and Yoko, where he's folded up naked against her? I'd be embarrassed as hell if somebody had a picture like that of me. It's a great picture though. The story is she took it just a few hours before he got shot to death. I'm sure that one photo netted her millions. She's done a lot of real successful commercial advertising campaigns. She was Jan Wenner's main picture taker during Rolling Stone's glory years. How much do you think that portfolio's worth? She's been at the top of her game for forty years. Her work product will be pumping out big money long after she's dead.

The reason I'm focusing on money is that I read that she put up the rights to all her pictures and virtually everything else she owns, as collateral against a 24 million dollar loan that she now can't pay back. The real bitch is that she used the money to make improvements on real estate investments, that because of market fluctuations, she can't currently get the money back out of. Whoever loaned her that money is gong to make out like a bandit.

You gotta ask yourself. How could she get herself into a situation like this. She's just one old dyke. How expensive can her life have been. She doesn't dress nice or spend a lot on jewelry. She doesn't have a big entourage. I don't think she strays too far from Manhattan. She goes to a lot of ritzy gatherings but I'm guessing she gets comped a lot, maybe even paid for just showing up. Didn't Susan Sontag leave her anything? I guess not. She was more one of those "my life is my art" kind of people. Didn't spend a lot of time on the best seller lists. Anyway. It seems to me Annie had it made and just somehow fucked up. Bummer.

It's always fun to see a celebrity take a fall but I got no bitch with Annie. I hope she pulls it together, makes good on her note and gets to keep the farm.