Annie Leibovitz belongs to a new
generation of photographers who are working to redefine the celebrity portrait
style. In place of glamour, glitter, perfection, and other worldliness
described by the celebrities of the 1930s, the stars of the last half of the
twentieth century have taken on attributes inescapably rooted in earthiness and
reality. The heroes of the thirties have given way to the antiheroes of the
sixties and seventies. While reflecting this trend toward the commonplace in
her photographs taken for Rolling Stone, and later Vanity Fair, Leibovitz incorporates a
sense of theatricality that is integral to the personalities of the performers
she portrays and thereby links her unique portrait style to that produced during
and subsequent to Hollywood's golden age.

The star portrayed here is Pat
Benatar, a rock singer who is trained in classic opera technique. In this
masterfully constructed portrait, the singer, dressed in what could be described
as a latter-day toga, stands beside a pseudoclassic urn with one foot propped
on a wallpapered balustrade, the other firmly set on artificial turf. Even
though the singer is dressed and posed with little of the glamour, elegance,
and perfection which had typified the Hollywood style of portraiture, Benatar's
theatrical surroundings are as contrived in their own way as were the retouched
and illusory portraits produced fifty years before.