LONDON (REUTERS).- Celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has arranged a deal with a private equity firm to sort out her debts, the Financial Times reported in its Tuesday edition.

The paper said Leibovitz, who has photographed everyone from Michelle Obama to Britain's Queen Elizabeth, has lined up real estate investment firm Colony Capital as a sole creditor to help manage her finances and market her work.

"We will be partners in managing her assets and her business so that Annie can spend her time and focus in pursuing her passion as only she can do," Tom Barrack, founder of Los-Angeles-based Colony was cited as saying in the FT.

The firm will allow Leibovitz to hold onto the rights of more than 100,000 photographs and is considering plans to hold traveling photographic exhibitions, the FT said.

"We will be working on new projects and I will have the support and freedom necessary for nurturing my work and preserving my archive," Leibovitz was cited as saying in the FT.

Leibovitz got into financial difficulties last year when Art Capital Group threatened to sue her and seize control of her entire collection and two properties for violating the terms of $24 million loan.

The two parties reached a deal last September allowing the photographer to buy back control of her work that had been put up as collateral.

Leibovitz is perhaps best known for a portrait of a naked John Lennon and a clothed Yoko Ono taken on the same day the former Beatle was shot dead.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Carol Bishopric)