Annie Leibovitz was born in 1949 in Connecticut, USA and began photographing for Rolling Stone in 1969 while still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. Famed for her iconic images of celebrities, in 1983 she became chief photographer for Vanity Fair. Winner of numerous awards, her exhibitions have toured the world many times over. She is the author of several landmark books, most recently Women (1999), with an essay by Susan Sontag, and 2003's American Music with texts by Patti Smith and Roseanne Cash (all Random House). In addition to her world-renown portraiture, she has also documented battered women, and conflict in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Rwanda. She has been associated with Contact Press Images since 1977. She is based in New York City.