Previous | Next :: Crucifixion and Air-fresh : Taxi Windscreen icon Union Sq and 14th St : NYC | August 5, 2009, 2:14 am

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I was sad to hear a piece this morning on the WNYC Radio..... on the breakfast news program...... about the finances of Annie Leibovitz . We photographer types generally live a slightly financially exposed life......... and we all kind of fondly imagine some photographers are so up there....... high in the exhalted heights of mega stardom....... that the notoriously precarious finances of professional photography in general do not apply to them. We like to imagine that. But it appears that it is not true. Maybe its just because they are actually just like the rest of us really ........ after all they are photographers.

I remember being slightly shocked to discover that Robert Mapplethorpe was pretty well totally bankrupt by the end.

Annie Leibovitz is not bankrupt she just appears to have got into financial difficulty doing up three adjoining brownstone town houses in Manhattan....... and she has pawned the rights to her photographic heritage....... for a tidy sum mind....... 24 million dollars ........ if she had decided to sell and achieved this sum for her archive...... I'd think wow thats a pretty penny....... but sadly it appears she has just borrowed this sum against the rights to her work....... with a view to paying it back and keeping control of her work ...... but it appears she cannot now pay it back........ so she may lose the rights to her work........ and the money loaning company apparently only loan a sum that is thought to be 40% of the value of the artwork....... so they must figure her archive is worth an astonishing 60 million dollars......... like wow...... like really wow ......... and it is truly sad if she looses her work without having decided thats what she wanted to do and without getting maximum value........ she has had a tough time in the last few years...... with the death of her partner Susan Sontag and both her parents have also died....... i don't know her....... some of my assistants have worked with her........ like pretty well all photographers I respect her work and her achievements......... I have a signed copy of one her books........ At the front of the book in Annie L's handwriting it reads:

Smita Patel............. (Smita Patel is crossed out) ....... Jez Coulson........ Hey Jez she loves you so much she is giving you her personal copy!!!!!!!!!! Good Luck Annie Leibovitz

(Smita is a great friend of mine who works at BBC Radio 4 and was interviewing Annie L)

I was back in the city.........NYC..... just for a bit....... doing my thing....... hassling taxi drivers........... I shot this in a taxi on my way to Union Sq to get my cameras cleaned...........I had a lovely chat with the driver...... originally from Sudan....... he told me his brother another taxi driver in Wales (UK) sent him the Jesus Crusifxion Icon when he first got his taxi....... it was especially to hang from his drivers mirror...... and bring him blessings and safety on the road............ Now I am near Chicago sitting in a rental car waiting for a pizza..... I have an air-freshner but no Jesus icon..............

Maybe I should get one and send it to Annie L to help her overcome her hassles ....... well maybe not...... but as she once in the past wished me luck ..... I now in turn now wish her 'Good Luck'.

Cheers Jez XXXXXX

www.jezblog.com

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