Tuesday, August 21, 2007

In Which Annie Gives Me Those Ones

I enter the plane and who do I see in front of me? Annie Leibovitz, sitting all by herself, reading the New York Times. Double, triple and quadruple takes (by me, not her.) Yup, that's Annie Leibovitz. No mistaking those glasses. I am hyperventilating. How could I not be? She took all those great photos (like this, this and this.) Oh, and she also shot that very famous picture on the morning of December 8, 1980.

Should I have said hello? Pulled out my cheap plastic pen and asked her for an autograph? Handed over my cellphone (the one with the 0.0002 nanopixel camera) to her and asked her for a portrait?

Sadly, I couldn't bring myself to doing any of those things. I chickened out and ate my overcooked chicken sandwich in regretful silence. But now I have decided that this non-encounter will be my Beatle story and it will always start this way: "I once flew with the photographer who took one of John's best pictures..." (mildly NSFW)

5 comments:

Space Bar said...

my qs is, how did you recognise her? that is to say, who took the photo of AL that was so iconic that you saw it and instant recognition followed?

km said...

space bar: Well, she isn't exactly unknown. Besides, how many famous lesbian rock photographers are there in New York? ;)

Anonymous said...

its 1AM and I need to be up by 7 tom. And now, after this post, i can't sleep w/o hearing to some miles, beatles, and the dead. damn man!

Tabula Rasa said...

MAN!
if it helps i don't know what i'd have done either. most of the time my attitude is a blase - yeah they're just another person, but this...

km said...

sri: party on, man :)

TR: I was blase too, when I flew with Shakti Kapoor a couple of times :)