March 18, 2009 by Amy

Okay, one more

Annie Leibovitz wrote, “There are not many smiling people in my pictures. I’ve never asked anyone to smile. Almost never. Maybe a few times I felt I had to, when people looked really depressed, but I apologized for asking. You can almost hear the sigh of relief when you tell someone they don’t have to smile.

Where did “Smile for the camera” come from? It’s a tic. A way of directing attention to the camera. “Look at the birdie.” The smile is a component of family pictures. Mothers don’t want to see their children looking unhappy…It took me years to understand that I equated asking someone to smile with asking them to do something false

There are people who smile naturally. It’s their temperament. And you can catch a smile that is spontaneous, of the moment. My daughter Sarah has the most beautiful smile. When you see it occuring so naturally in children you hate to see it lost. I crumbled inside one day when I saw Sarah fake a smile.”

I understand that completely. My best images of Zozer are, without a doubt, those that aren’t posed with a faked smile.

I used to feel guilty that I didn’t take her to Olan Mills or Picture People to have studio portraits made. People I work with bring in their proofs and I’d have a twinge of guilt that I wasn’t having regular formal portraits made of my little girl. But then one day I took a good, hard look at my favorite images I have framed at my desk. They, much like the photograph I made above, told me I wouldn’t trade my images for the finest studio shots in all the world. There’s not a single photographer out there who could capture what I do, simply because of the trust and love Zoe and I have for each other. How cool is that?!