Photographer Annie Leibovitz's lifework is on the line

But the 59-year-old Leibovitz soon could lose control of her life's work, for the very reason she needed money, and fast.

Leibovitz faces a Tuesday deadline to repay a $24-million loan from a New York art-finance company. Art Capital Group advanced her that sum last year after the photographer, in "dire financial condition," as court papers put it, posted as collateral basically everything she owns -- not only her two homes but "every photographic image ever taken by Ms. Leibovitz," according to the lender.

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The litigation has placed a spotlight on the pressures facing the 6-foot-tall photographer, who is juggling multimillion-dollar mortgages on her triple town house-studio in Greenwich Village and her 200-acre Astor Barns country estate up the Hudson River, and more than $2 million in tax liens and unpaid bills.

Leibovitz is not talking, but supporters say she did not realize what she was signing away; like many creative sorts, she is less than focused on pocketbook matters. "Artists like her generally don't do it for the money," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "If they did they'd be working for AIG . . . "

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Leibovitz reached that state during a wrenching decade during which she lost both her parents and her leukemia-stricken companion, Susan Sontag. Leibovitz became a single mother of three daughters, the last two, twins, born to a surrogate. She also bought the West Village properties that proved a migraine headache even by New York fixer-upper standards

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-leibovitz5-2009sep05,0,6842384.story?page=2

Are we supposed to feel sympathy for her?

Don't tell me she couldn't afford a lawyer to explain the contract to her.

She has been acclaimed as a great photographer. I don't think she is great. She is good at putting people with odd props, and apparently is good at spending tons of money.

She has done some beautiful work. I'd hate to see commercials on tv using it if she loses control of it. I hope something can be done.

Technically a superb photograph as one could expect. Subject matter not so nice.

as if she does it for free. Total bunk.

She has two multi-million dollar properties and gets paid millions to take photographs. Must be nice. Sounds like she spent even more than she made, and that's a lot!

I hope somebody comes forward and helps her out because her work is too special to be exploited.

She has taken more of the defining images of the last half century than anyone.

But still...

WTF was she thinking?

That's a gentle euphemism. Sounds almost like it wasn't her fault.

Heard about this on the radio the other day. Not much sympathy. Apparently she made some bad investments. What a dumb shit. I am not worth .0001 of what she is but I am smart enough to understand why a financial adviser is important.

Katrina was a disaster.

What she did was act like a capitalist and lose.

Control of your work, and live free of being pimped out

But Leibovitz's deal with Art Capital goes well beyond such arrangements. It could result in the outright sale of her photo copyrights to a party who might decide it's better to market her images in lots of 1,000, or on postcards, not the fine-art limited-edition approach she has embraced.

Art Capital says it secured one more thing for its largesse -- the "irrevocable right" to serve as her exclusive agent through the loan period and two years after, meaning it would negotiate photo shoots she does outside her contracted ones for Vanity Fair and get a cut of her newly created work too.

or sell the fucking houses and pay the bill.

Somehow these words seem to have a different impact for the female of the species.

I know. I am married to one.

To me, the solution to our (the bums') current financial straits are simple . . . liquidate the asset that holds >90% of our net worth. Mrs. bum would apparently rather . . . at least see me die from the stress of trying to see how to make it work otherwise.

Go ahead. Call me sexist. But 100% of the men I talk with agree with me without a pause. And I am sure that 100% of her friends sympathize and support her strategy.

I AM a female of the species.

Leibovitz has the means to regain her wealth: she can work and, if she can pay back that loan, she'll own all the rights to the reproduction of her previous work to get as much future money as she can stand.

This isn't about a female thing, it's an artist thing. Does she want to be pimped out to the highest bidder and control her work, or doesn't she?

Her friends probably supported her strategy but it failed. Right now, her new strategy seems to be, "turn to the press." If her friends REALLY want to be supportive, why don't they loan her the money, themselves?

in taxes from inheritance that she wouldn't be if she had been straight.

she got very used to acting as if money was no object- with her work and her personal life. a lot of people she used for film props etc...were not geting paid. that;s been going on for quite some time.

and that she had to pay taxes on half of its value at a rate of 50%. Thus she had to pay a fourth of its value to the taxman.

http://nymag.com/fashion/09/fall/58346/

it's great she's a generous person but she didn't take care of herself or her family. She's like the Michael Jackson of Photography

http://nymag.com/fashion/09/fall/58346/index5.html

Leibovitz had also built a life that had become extraordinarily expensive to maintain. It wasn’t just the mortgages on the homes. It was the Range Rover, the trips to Paris, the chef and housekeeper, the handyman, the personal yoga instructor, the terrace gardener, and the live-in nanny. There was only one man Leibovitz deemed qualified to work on anything involving air-conditioning or ductwork at either residence, and he lived in Vermont. “She wanted her life to be like a magazine spread,” Kellum says. “Everything beautiful, nothing out of place. She wanted everything to be perfect.”

Leibovitz was also famously generous with her family. “If I was in a bookstore with my sister, I would be afraid to even look at a book,” says Leibovitz’s younger sister Paula. “If I even looked at it, she’d turn around and buy it for me.” When Marilyn Leibovitz was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2007, Leibovitz rented her a house on the ocean so she’d be able to hear the same surf she heard as a child summering on the Jersey shore.

It’s impossible to account for all of Leibovitz’s line-item expenses, but as surprising as it may be to outsiders, she was clearly spending beyond her means. One close associate of Leibovitz’s theorizes that she identified too much with her subjects. “Photographers aren’t professional athletes, recording artists, or supermodels,” the source says. “Compared to 99 percent of the world, she makes a vast fortune. The problem occurs when a person becomes so famous that they start feeling that they’re more in line financially with Oprah or Madonna.”

same as last week: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x8991490#8992435