Leibovitz photos capture spirit of times

Legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz thought her latest compilation of work would end with a historic portrait of President Hillary Clinton sitting in the Oval Office.

Maybe she could use Eleanor Roosevelt’s old desk to play up the symbolism of a woman, at last, leading the world’s most powerful nation. She’d squeeze in the photo session with Clinton just before publication time.

We all know how that dream ended.

“When Hillary Clinton lost, I didn’t have an ending,” says Leibovitz.

Her new book, “Annie Leibovitz: Portraits: 2005-2016” (Phaidon, $89.95), might not include the triumphant ending she wanted, but the dozens of images in it capture a revolutionary decade nonetheless. It was a time that saw the United States elect its first African-American president; the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat; the tyranny of the selfie; and a reckoning with how we think about gender and sexuality, achievement and fame, culture and belonging.

Since 1970, Leibovitz, 68, has produced some of the most iconic photos of some of the most influential figures in popular culture, the arts and politics, for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Vogue, among others.

The way we view fame, power and womanhood in particular has a lot to do with her witty, painterly and often mythic images.

Olympian Carl Lewis in red stilettos; Bette Midler on a bed of roses; artist Keith Haring naked and painted head-to-toe in his distinctive white-and-black tribal patterns; Michael Jackson perched like a bird on the tippy toes of his black loafers; Whoopi Goldberg grinning in a bathtub filled with milk; a nude and pregnant Demi Moore holding her belly; comedian Chris Rock in white face; Caitlyn Jenner depicted as an old-school pinup bombshell; future first lady Melania Trump, pregnant and glowing in a gold bikini on the stairs of a private jet as future President Donald Trump chills in a sports car.

That last portrait is included in the new book, iconography for a paradoxical era in American society.

Taken in 2006 when Trump was still a real-estate-mogul-turned-reality-TV-star, it resonates even more now that the celebrity couple occupy the White House, the gold-plated showmanship of their jet-set personas a striking contrast to the elegance and introspection of portraits in the book of former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, and the pant-suited seriousness of Clinton in a photo taken when she was secretary of state.

Leibovitz’s leftward leanings were evident in a one-on-one interview.

She has described the 2016 presidential election as a shattering moment in American society, the year or so of activism since Inauguration Day “like fighting evil.”

Sitting in a suite at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle, looking professorial with her long white hair, black eyeglasses, black button-down and black pants, she seemed more defiant than dejected.

“The women’s march was so powerful,” she says of the massive demonstrations after Trump’s inauguration. “To watch us as a people pull ourselves together and to watch what the press has been doing, I’m actually impressed with us … I think we’re going to right ourselves, but it’s going to be a little while.”

Looking back on her work as a way of moving forward, Leibovitz says she’s more certain than ever that she needs to focus on her portrait work, a field of photography she’s surprisingly self-critical about, given that some of her past portraits are among the most recognizable pictures ever taken.

“I woke up one morning and realized that I was in this extraordinary position to do the portraits of our time,” Leibovitz says. “It’s a big responsibility, but I feel like that’s what I’m going to do — to tell what we look like and who we are.”