SANTA FE, NM.- The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum announced today that legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz will be the guest of honor at its 2010 Women of Distinction Series event on March 6, 2010, at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe.

Leibovitz was a selected in recognition for her 40 years of iconic work, which has included some of the most memorable, provocative and moving works, making her arguably the most well-known living artist in the photographic medium.

Of being recognized by the Women of Distinction Series, Leibovitz said, “Georgia O’Keeffe was one of the first artists I was aware of as a young person. Alfred Stieglitz’s photographs of O’Keeffe are especially important to me. They are some of the greatest portraits ever made. But it is O’Keeffe’s example as a working artist that makes her such an inspirational figure to so many of us. She set off on her own, did her own work. I’m honored to receive this award from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.”

At the March event, Leibovitz will take those in attendance on a journey through some of her most famous photographs.

Richard B. Stolley, who has edited several photographic histories as a senior editorial advisor at Time Inc., will lead the event in a question-and-answer format with Leibovitz.

Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz began her career as a photojournalist for Rolling Stone in 1970 while she was still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Her pictures have appeared regularly on magazine covers ever since, and her large and distinguished body of work encompasses some of the most well-known portraits of our time.

Leibovitz’s first major assignment was for a cover story on John Lennon. She became Rolling Stone magazine’s chief photographer in 1973, and by the time she left the magazine ten years later, she had shot one hundred and forty-two covers and published photo essays on scores of stories. Memorable Rolling Stone stories include her unforgettable accounts of the resignation of Richard Nixon and of the 1975 Rolling Stones tour.

In 1983, when she joined the staff of the revived Vanity Fair, she was established as the foremost rock music photographer and an astute documentarian of the social landscape. At Vanity Fair, and later at Vogue, she developed a large body of work—portraits of actors, directors, writers, musicians, athletes, and political and business figures, as well as fashion photographs—that expanded her collective portrait of contemporary life.

In addition to her editorial work, she has created several influential advertising campaigns, including her award-winning portraits for American Express and the Gap.

Several collections of Leibovitz’s work have been published. They include Annie Leibovitz: Photographs (1983); Annie Leibovitz: Photographs 1970–1990 (1991); Olympic Portraits (1996); Women (1999), in collaboration with Susan Sontag; American Music (2003); and A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005 (2006). In 2008, she published Annie Leibovitz at Work, a first-person commentary on her career, from her coverage of the resignation of Nixon to the commissioned portraits of Queen Elizabeth II. Exhibitions of her work have appeared at museums and galleries all over the world.

Leibovitz is the recipient of many honors. In 2006 she was decorated a Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. The previous year, in a compilation of the forty top magazine covers of the past forty years by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), she held the top two spots (number one for the photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono taken for Rolling Stone the day Lennon was shot, and number two for the pregnant Demi Moore in Vanity Fair). In 2009, she received the International Center of Photography’s Lifetime Achievement Award and was also named the first recipient of ASME’s Creative Excellence Award. Leibovitz has been designated a Living Legend by the Library of Congress.