Annie Leibovitz: The $24 million question (New York magazine)

(Photo: John Keatley/Redux)

How Could This Happen to Annie Leibovitz?

I just finished reading this story and I don’t know what to say. It’s amazing to me how someone of her stature and creativity can find herself in a predicament where she might lose the rights to her own work and then still owe millions of dollars on a loan. Leibovitz obviously has problems dealing with money issues, but this is still ridiculous.

Leibovitz is known to have a drive for perfection in her work, which seems to have been the beginning of her problems. According to this piece, she didn't have unlimited budgets from the outset, but drove up the costs of the shoots she did in the hunt for perfection in her work. Of course, she was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to photograph celebrities for high-profile magazines, so I guess having access to that kind of money and not really caring about what was spent would lead to disaster eventually. I mean, get rid of one or two of the multi-million dollar homes, perhaps? Actually hire a good lawyer and financial manager, maybe?