"Women, New Portraits,"by Annie Leibovitz in Mexico D.C.

In 1999 Annie Leibovitz, in collaboration with her partner, Susan Sontag, presented the exhibition and book titled Women. Back then, Sontag, who died in 2004, said that those images—those portraits—brought down the stereotypical (the eternal notion of women seen from a chauvinist cultural perspective) roles played by women in order to explore and showcase feminine identity—unadulterated—during the end of the last century. When Annie Leibovitz—who has captured the faces of women and men that stand out for their political activism, artistic work or mass media appeal—was invited by the UBS Swiss bank to develop a new exhibition, she proposed a follow-up of that earlier project. This allowed her to continue the project while also going over her earlier works, which among other things included looking into the last fifteen years. The new series includes portraits of activists Malala Yousafzai and Aung San Suu Kyi, primatologist Jane Goodall, Olympic medalist Caitlyn Jenner, singers Taylor Swift and Adele, and documentarian Laura Poitras, among others. Also planned for this work-in-progress (which combines her work as photographer of prominent political activists, gender affirmation themes, and archival vocation) are the portraits of artist Marina Abramovic and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, along with—as declared by the artist in Mexico City, where her traveling exhibition was inaugurated on July 8—the portraits of author Elene Poniatowska and women's rights activist Andrea Medina-Rosas. Any review of Annie Leibovitz's work, whether thematic—as in this case—or otherwise, involves a list of names. But no matter which list it is, the portraits by this photographer, the production that they entail, and the venues that showcase (or exploit) them, form constellations that capture, with a New York-centric hegemonic gaze, immediate and historically distant social, cultural and political environments that go beyond the personal or commercial works commissioned. To be the model of an Annie Leibovitz's portrait has become a privilege in which the subject becomes part of a catalog and archive that is also a sort of honor roll. Annie Leibovitz embraces her celebrity and the celebrity of her subjects. In this exhibition she looks for the true role of women in contemporary world, in an attempt to go beyond good intentions and media coverage. About her profession, she has said that her models have sometimes been reluctant subjects (something paradoxical in a world where selfies have become the predominant type of photograph, surpassing the images of monuments or celebrities). After confessing that she would much rather be at the dentist than posing before a camera, Jane Goodall gave Leibovitz only eight minutes to shoot her portrait. "Women, New Portraits" by Annie Leibovitz is exhibited at Casa Modelo / Proyecto Público Prim from July 8 to July 31 of 2016.