Laura Poitras is a badass woman. Not only has she consistently delivered unprecedented perspective on the surveillance state through documentaries like Citizenfour, but her very first solo show is at the Whitney Museum of American Art—an accomplishment in and of itself, on top of the immersive and novel way she presents her perception of the world.Poitras is among the women showcased in master portraitist Annie Leibovitz's latest series, WOMEN: New Portraits, to be shown at The Presidio’s Crissy Field in San Francisco. Each portrait contextualized the woman with the work that has made them influencial. She captures Paskistani feminist and education activist Malala Yousafzai in a classroom, African American ballet trailblazer Misty Copeland poised perfectly on the tips her pointe shoes, feminist icon and writer Gloria Steinem in her office, and noted technologist Sheryl Sandberg in a boardroom. Poitras is captured in the thermal imaging aesthetic that defines her show at the Whitney, and evokes the omnipresence of surveillance in general.
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Leibovitz captured these portraits, a continuation of the beloved Women series she's been adding to since 1999, on commission from financial firm UBS. "With these new portraits, Annie wanted to kick it up a notch," a representative of Leibovitz tells The Creators Project. The original photographs are populist slices of female life, but the new iterations find her subjects in their most powerful setting. The representative continues, "She wanted to focus on women who are more well known, and really keep the conversation about women going."
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