If you haven't seen these amazing exhibits yet, the High Museum is extending its hours this week. It will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on both Saturday, September 1st and Sunday, September 2nd. You can buy tickets up to one hour before the museum closes.
ATLANTAboys don't like to wait -- and now you don't have to with an Atlanta CityPass...
With the new World of Coke opening on May 24th, this is the perfect time to get one. You'll get access to all six of the following top Atlanta attractions for about $10 each, plus you get to skip the lines:
The world's largest aquarium isn't located in Florida or the Bahamas -- it's right here in Georgia!
The Georgia Aquarium consists of over 8 million gallons of water including an 800,000 gallon beluga whale habitat. You'll also find the only whale shark habitat in an aquarium outside of Asia.
The Aquarium's five galleries include Ocean Voyager (a 100-foot long tunnel surrounded by water and animals on three sides), Cold Water Quest (with beluga whales, California sea lions, sea otters and a giant Pacific octopus), Tropical Diver (the largest coral reef exhibit of any aquarium), River Scout (with Amazonian fishes) and Georgia Explorer (with animals from Gray's Reef off the coast of Georgia.)
Two loves have greatly influenced Annie Leibovitz's work: her mother (a dance instructor) and writer/essayist Susan Sontag (her "lover"), who died of cancer in 2004.
It's obvious Leibovitz truly loved Sontag, as she gets a little choked up every time she talks about her. In fact, there are almost more photos of Sontag in the exhibition than there are of the celebrities Leibovitz is best known for shooting.
(Nicole Kidman, New York, 2003. Courtesy of "Vogue.")
Although Leibovitz's work mostly reflects life, she clearly doesn't like to take photos of people with smiles. In fact, you'll
be hard pressed to find any of her subjects in the exhibition smiling.
"You have to understand, my family was the kind that always smiled for
pictures. I just thought it was kind of... fake. In the portrait I took of
my mother, she's not smiling. She thought she looked old and didn't
like the photo. But at an exhibit once all these people were
gathered around asking for her autograph, so she kind of liked that."
Pondering photos of lover Susan Sontag undergoing chemotherapy.
"I've recently started looking for a cemetery, which is sort of like looking for a good apartment in New York City. People are afraid to talk about death. So before my dad died, I made sure to talk to him about... those kinds of things. But I promise there's more to this exhibition than just death," she says with a laugh.
"The great thing about this photo is if you love George Bush, you love this photo. And if you hate Bush, you hate this photo. I only had 45 minutes to take it, which was a LONG time."
When asked why she thinks she's become such an icon, she says, "A lot of hard work. It's all about the work. Also I don't think of myself as a photographer. I think of myself as an artist who uses photography."
Leibovitz has been under contract as a landscape photographer with "Conde Nast Traveler" since 1993. Other contracts include "Vanity Fair," "Rolling Stone", and "Vogue."
Annie Leibovitz is no stranger to Georgia. In fact, we actually attended her first exhibition at the High Museum in 1994. Two years later Leibovitz photographed athletes at the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. She also went to Cumberland Island to photograph Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rob Besserer on the beach.
"Cumberland Island is an amazing place. I ended up staying with them for three weeks, which is the longest I've stayed anywhere with a subject, except for the Rolling Stones tour which I couldn't get off of for eight years!"
"I asked if I could just watch them make a dance, which is what this photo is about."
And what about that famous "Vanity Fair" cover of Demi Moore nude and pregnant 1994? "I had worked with Demi a lot, and did her wedding pictures when she married Bruce Willis. I told her then that I was interested in photographing a pregnant woman, which I had never done before."
"I shot some close-ups of Demi Moore for the magazine, and I said, 'you know, we should do some nudes just for you.'"
"Demi called me when she was pregnant with her first child. Bruce was working on a film in Kentucky, so I stopped there on the way back to New York from Los Angeles. Then three years later, when Demi had a movie coming out, 'Vanity Fair' asked me to take a picture of her for the cover. As I was shooting I said, 'You know, this would be a great cover.
'Vanity Fair' decided to go with it -- I didn't quite understand the
impact it would have on people."
"I photographed Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino standing next to each other in my studio, but I had to cut them into two separate photos because they couldn't be together."
In 1994 her most shocking photo at the High Museum was Whoopi Goldberg in a bathtub filled with milk. This time around she's got Chris Rock donning "whiteface" and Beyonce as Alice in Wonderland. Clearly some things haven't changed, but a lot has, like getting to finally photograph Queen Elizabeth II. Leibovitz is the first American honored with taking her portrait.
(Brad Pitt, Las Vegas, 1994. Courtesy of "Vanity Fair.")
"They gave me 30 minutes to photograph her. She said she remembered
me asking if I could photograph her years ago, and she felt bad for
turning me down. The photos were good, but they were more like a
document. I did a lot of research; they sent me books of her clothes
and jewelry I could choose from.
I wanted to include everything, so we did the shoot at Buckingham
Palace. She was a little feisty because she had to wear the whole outfit and
everything -- it was a bit like photographing your 80-year old aunt. But she was great. At the end I told her I had made a bit of a
mistake and needed her to come back so I could do something else, and
she did."
"I got rid of my studio. It was becoming a burden, so now I prefer to shoot in the great outdoors. I'm also using a lot of digital, which I love. If I want to make it look like film I can, and it gives me a lot of leeway with color. For instance I used to not be able to shoot a subject in front of a green tree, because green looks black on film. But now I can do that. I first started using digital when I shot Barack Obama, because I wanted it to look like 'now.' It looks sort of like television."
So what advice does Annie Leibovitz have for budding photographers? "The thing I tell artists now is to make sure they preserve their work. Put it into a book. It doesn't have to be published, but put it into something."
Then on Sunday May 6th, check out Fiesta Atlanta!, Atlanta's largest Hispanic outdoor family festival at Centennial Olympic Park from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Over 25,000 people are expected to attend what will become Atlanta's annual signature Hispanic event.
Fiesta Atlanta is a day-long celebration of Latino culture, music, and food plus continuous live performances by national and local artists, vendor booths with free product samples, arts and crafts, and authentic Latino foods. Ugly Betty would be so proud!
According to "Business 2.0," Midtown Mile, the 14-block complex opening its first phase next year with "dozens of new hotels, shops, and offices" promises to bring Atlanta lots of new jobs along with the bioscience research center Technology Enterprise Park.
Atlanta was ranked #10 in available jobs for college-educated workers ages 25-34 and #1 for cities in need of coveted computer programmers, software engineers, and network administrators.
Here are Atlanta's hottest jobs according to "Business 2.0.":
Annie Leibovitz has created powerful images documenting American pop culture since the early 1970s, like the photo on the right she snapped of Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rob Besserer on Georgia's Cumberland Island in 1990.
Annie Leibovitz got her start as a concert photographer for "Rolling Stone," and has been a featured portrait photographer for "Vanity Fair" since 1983. Most recently she was chosen to photograph Queen Elizabeth II's official portrait. Her latest exhibition comprises more than 150 images she took on assignment as well as portraits of family and friends including Demi Moore, Jamie Foxx, Mick Jagger, Chris Rock, Robert DeNiro, and Al Pacino.
Part of the Presidential Library System, the Jimmy Carter Library & Museum features photographs and historica memorabilia from the Carter presidency (1976 to 1981) and also from the personal life of Jimmy Carter.
You'll find an exact replica of the Oval Office and some of the gifts received by the Carters.
If you haven't already, this is the final week to see the Louvre's Year One pieces at the High Museum of Art before they return to France...
Looking for something to do for Cinco de Mayo in Atlanta on May 5th weekend?
