Growing up an Air Force brat, Annie started taking pictures when her family was stationed in the Phillipines during the Vietnam War, later pioneering modern portraiture with her work in the newly formed magazine Rolling Stone, where she became head photographer several years later.

Consider this photo of Willie Nelson.  Leibovitz is famous for her portraiture of celebrities and public figures, modern people we see in countless tabloids and newspapers every day.  Yet I look at this picture and I see a different Willie Nelson than I might expect to see on a PBS acoustic special.  The first thing that strikes me is the overwhelming variation in textures which are emphasized in the black and white print; we are drawn into the scratchy denim, tendinous hair, patchy beard, and wrinkled face.  The clear, nearly straight line of the white of his collar frames the odd expression that crosses his face.  This is someone very famous captured in a moment when they looked and presumably felt anything but.

Lance Armstrong is a man famous for his accomplishments on a bike, but this photo looks past that.  Yes, there is a bike, and yes, he is riding it.  But we the viewer are presented with the most spectacular and unique thing about Armstrong, his carefully kept and well-earned athletic physique.  His body is unclothed, front and center in the frame, and becomes the focus of the photo without becoming lewd or uncomfortable in its nakedness.  We are shown a machine of muscle bending another machine to its will.  There is liquid of some kind, water or perhaps sweat, making the entire image seem almost natural, primal. 
Compare this photo, taken off of a google search about Armstrong, to Leibovitz’s photo.  The pose and posture are similar, and both include the beloved bicycle.  But it’s the first which makes an impact and grabs attention, not the second.  This second man could be anyone.  Only the first truly captures the uniqueness that is such a driven athlete.

Jacob Riis, Five Cent Lodging, 1889

What strikes me most about the images Riis used to move along his reformist agenda is that the images capture the situation, not the individual.  The above photo contains many faces, but none which particularly catch my interest or make me pause.  It is the room which presents itself as the focus of the image.  We the viewer see the smallness of this space with an intimacy that could only be depicted by someone who had lived in these conditions, who understood the way it felt to have no choice but to survive in abject poverty and squalor.

This woman sits front and center, and yet I find myself looking at the sacks and barrels around her.  We are, again, presented a world through a lense which is covered in refuse and cluttered with objects, which mute and belittle the importance and usual precedent of the living beings who exist within these collections of junk. 

Jacob Riis, Mullen's Alley

Here we see a group of young boys looking serious and imposing in body position and language.  This is emphasized by the grim, sky-less world that they are clearly a part of.  What separates the body of Riis’ work from that of others is the social context that is readable through the images; we see these photographs and realize where they come from, and what they mean for society and its inner workings.  Even if they were not taken by Riis personally, as he later hired amateur photographers to take images which he used in his lectures and activist work, they still retain the spirit of his anguished cry for social change.

Particularly, I find it interesting how he describes the nature of photography and how it contains a “half language.” He conjectures that a photo itself cannot speak, but merely stand as evidence that supports something else. The other half of the language comes from what we as the viewer, as members of a collective and united mankind, associate the aspects of the photo with.

Take this photo, for example:

Here we have an image which, in composition alone, is striking. If we were unaware of the context of the image, the segmentation and geometric presence in the frame of the photo would be noteworthy. We might wonder if this was a building just demolished to make way for a better structure. Instead, it could be suggested that there had been a recent fire of some kind, as there is smoke in the background and the man in front wears a uniform not unlike that of a firefighter. Perhaps the single man standing with his hands in the air could be gesturing to other construction workers or police. We would not know why, but we could tell that he intended to communicate with urgency.

As Americans who lived through this event, we view this photo and immediately know that it depicts the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. We see this image and recognize its context because we have previous knowledge and association with the subject of the photograph itself; the dress of the man in the photo is similar to that of the countless rescue workers who searched the debris looking for survivors. Viewing this image most likely evokes feelings of sadness, anger, perhaps pride in being an American. The feelings experienced will vary from person to person; perhaps, if a loved one was lost on that day, the response will be greater, or perhaps different altogether from that of someone who watched the attacks from their livingroom or school. This is the other half of the photographic language. We are trained to instinctually find meaning in photos, which are ambiguous in nature, but which provide an important scaffolding for what Berger calls “the particular”, or what we know before viewing the photo and therefore use to make sense of what we view before us.

Berger’s main claim was basically that a truly powerful photo must take an intimate, personal moment, and give it a meaning that is understood by all, that transcends universally; the photo must evoke emotion that remains somewhat similar from person to person. There is something about this photograph which speaks to the viewer despite their association with America or its wounds. There is a man, whose expression conveys urgency, in the midst of rubble. I doubt that anyone could view it and say that the event being shown in this photo was a happy one. If viewed by a firefighter, perhaps the positioning of the subject’s hands would signify some sort of rescue worker signal that we as civilians are unaware of. This would give the photo specific meaning for that person, but would not negate meaning for us in the process. The image of an outfitted man or woman braving chaos to save others is a universal symbol that we all understand, one that speaks about society by depicting an organized facet of it, which we recognize through the coherence of familiar appearances.

Berger also outlined rules of quotation when considering the value of a photograph, and this ties in with the subject of language as well. Knowing the subject of the photograph allows it to “quote at length” instead of providing a “short quotation” that comes with a photo whose subject has a less personal tie with the viewer.

Consider this photograph for example:

First impressions might stem from two figures which are half present, each providing a bookend for opposite ends of the photograph. It is clear that they are in a car, and that there is heavy traffic. It is just turning into night time, there is music playing; it can be deduced that they are on their way someplace. The evidence we see in the photo, which we pick up on because of our ability to look for cohesion of appearances, suggests all this without much stretching. This is a short quotation, in that it provides a sort of statement or situation to the reader from what they know.

I took this picture several years ago, sitting in the back seat of this car. My two friends sat up front as the three of us headed out for a night in the city. When see this photo, I too see the preparation for a night to come, and the heavy traffic that made us wait.

I also see the fifteen minutes that came before we were robbed in the parking garage we foolishly tried to park in because it was cheaper, despite the shady part of town. I view this image and see things that you the other viewer does not; I know the two girls in the photo, and I know the situation. The emotion you experience is similar to my own up to a point, up to the short quotation. But the long quotation can only be read by someone who knew the subject of the photo, be it the people or the event surrounding them. The long quotation arises when a deeper, personal connection with the photograph is made.

There are many famous pictures of the beatles, mugging for the camera, being mobbed by fans, visiting exotic locales with their entourage of friends and musicians.  Despite personal opinion on the “Yoko-Beatles” issue, no one can deny that this is one of the most powerful images of a Beatle ever taken.
Annie Leibovitz took this with the intention that Yoko, too, would be nude, but changed her idea when her female subject refused to go au naturale. 
The background is a plain, neutral color, contrasting to the darkness of Yoko’s hair and clothing.  The first and most obvious contrast that you notice when looking at the photo is that while she is wearing a sweater and pants, John is completely naked; this makes him appear more primitive, more raw. 
Her body is prostrate and purely vertical.  His is curled around her as if shielding her or holding on to her for strength himself.  They are opposites in all visual senses, and yet there is a strong sense given to the viewer of how close and intimate their relationship is.  The action of the kiss is second to the other modes of touching and contact captured by the camera.
In a historical context, it’s saddest to consider that this was taken on December 8th of 1980, mere hours before Lennon was shot and killed.  This is, as far as we know, the last photograph taken of Lennon while he was alive.

"Approaching Shadow" by Fan Ho, courtesy of http://www.modernbook.com/fhapproachingshadow.jpg

I’ve always liked this photograph for its simplicity, its elegance, and its ability to grab your attention with just a short glance. 
In looking for an image on the web to put in the blog, I found that the enormous “shadow” was done in the enlargement process after it was taken.  He exposed that part of the photo more times than the rest for dramatic effect.

The photo is split into six clean, obvious segments.  First there is the dark bottom earth, then the wall face.  This is followed by the indent in a pure brilliant white, supporting  the woman in black, framed by the two divisions of the inset wall face before her.  The large and stark segmentation gives the appearance of a tiny human being in a color-blocked world; at first look, you can hardly tell that the straight white line is a result of angle and perspective instead of simply a painted background.
The light triangular segment of the wall face is almost an arrow shape, pointing at the woman who looks in the same downward direction the arrow points.  The viewer wonders what she is looking at, and if she sees the same vast loneliness that we have been shown through her posture, direction of gaze, and proportionally small stature.

"VJ Day in Times Square" by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Most people are familiar with Eisenstaedt’s most famous picture, entitled “VJ Day in Times Square,” which depicts a sailor dipping a nurse low and kissing her in the midst of the celebration after Truman announced the Allied victory.  
“VJ Day” encompasses the chaos and the joy and the sheer immensity of the fall of the Axis and its hostile intentions.  With so much of the country’s population off in armed services and aid organizations, the war was the overbearing factor in many families’ and individuals’ lives. 
Over half a century later, you can buy poster-sized prints of the photograph in stores, online, even at the traveling art fair that comes to our university twice a year.  It has become a symbol of good and hope for so many, especially in similar times of war and conflict.  
At the time, there was no internet.  There were no cell phones or Blackberries or widely available personal camcorders.  People relied on the images captured by a select few to show them the places and events they themselves could not experience.  Not every American got to experience the metropolitan ticker tape parades or rioting in the streets first hand, but through photography they could become a participant in the far away celebration.  Eisenstaedt captured a moment in time that signified a universal sentiment, but did so by trapping reality as it unfolded.
Eisenstaedt’s photo creates its own significance by both documenting a historic event and time and place, and immortalizing for future generations the thrill of relief and triumph in an era gone by.  To his viewers in the 1940′s, it showed what they felt and lived.  To us, it shows what we have accomplished in the past, and hope to have again.