'Wonderland' opens in Spain, an exhibition that traces Annie Leibovitz's journey through pop culture and fashion

The photographer Annie Leibovitz revealed her world this Friday in “Wonderland”, her first major exhibition in Spain, promoted by the Marta Ortega Pérez Foundation, in which images of Rihanna – “a super intelligent woman” – appear, as well as Penélope Cruz, Almodóvar, Elon Musk and Salman Rushdie.

Born in Connecticut, USA, in 1949, Leibovitz's career spans five decades, which are explored in the exhibition. She is the artist behind some of the most emblematic images of pop culture and the history of her country.

“I've been in a position where I've been able to photograph a time in my life,” he said, making the exhibition a “historical document of the world we've lived in.”

“Everyone is interesting. Everyone has something,” said Leibovitz, stressing that his true interest lies in portraiture and “understanding” the person, as well as discovering the creative processes of other artists.

However, he stressed that if there is a field that he deeply respects, it is photojournalism. “It's the most extraordinary photograph,” he said, praising the work of reporters who risk – and sometimes lose – their lives to capture an image.

He noted that in his work, “above all,” he thinks about the timelessness of his photographs. “I like that they last,” said Annie Leibovitz during a tour of the exhibition with almost a hundred journalists in the rooms, where videos of Bruce Springsteen, his agent, Karen Mulligan, and creative director Grace Coddington are also shown, detailing their meticulousness, stubbornness and determination in their work.

The MOP Foundation space in the port of A Coruña will be open to the public from this Saturday, November 22 until May 1, 2026, and will allow visitors to contemplate hundreds of images (many of them exhibited for the first time) by the photographer who took the portraits of King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, which hang on the walls of the Bank of Spain.

“They were both surprised that I wanted to take such a formal photo, but I was interested in starting from tradition,” she said.

Although two rooms of the exhibition are dedicated to fashion and Hollywood, the photographer stated that when she started she did not take fashion “very seriously.” “I was more interested in technique than fashion,” he said, revealing that that was why he spent hours in front of kiosks observing the work of photographers he admired. But “you can't take a fashion photograph without seeing fashion,” he added.

She confirmed that it was Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, who finally turned her into a fashion photographer.

Beyond the image

In addition to a tour of his career, the exhibition offers a mirror of his work, also revealing how he creates it. In some images he introduces, without words, a social commentary in what he called his “journalistic facet.”

This is the case of a photograph of Kim Kardashian with her daughter in her arms, taking a portrait with her mobile phone, while her ex-husband takes another with an iPad, along with Leibovitz himself.

The exhibition begins with a mural, which she calls the “learning” mural for young photographers, with images from the 1975 Rolling Stones tour, which she joined when she was still a student, stating that she knew how to use color, “but it wasn't true.”

After starting at Rolling Stone magazine, he moved on to Vanity Fair, where he committed himself to social reality, a stage that led to Vogue, with fashion and Hollywood at his feet.

iconic images

The artist who took the last image of John Lennon before his murder created iconic images such as the 1991 portrait of actress Demi Moore, naked and pregnant, a controversial Vanity Fair cover that was later emulated by singers like Rihanna. He also made lesser-known portraits such as those of Tom Cruise and a young Scarlett Johansson.

Pinned with thumbtacks, the photographs show the evolution of the photographer, with images of athletes and activists for the environment and human rights, her parents driving and even her “trafficker.”

Winner of the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, Leibovitz's exhibition highlights her interest in writers, visual artists and landscape.

Meticulousness

“When I did a feature on different poets for Life magazine, I read all their work; I wondered if it could be represented in photography,” he said of his meticulousness.

A detail that is evident in his books “Wonderland” and “The Wizard of Oz”, stories that he translated into images while reading those stories to his daughters, in which he involved designers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Tom Ford.

She admitted that she was not sure if she wanted to do this exhibition, but her visit to the Irving Penn exhibition, along with Marta Ortega and Carlos Torretta, erased her doubts.

“Tears came to my eyes and here we are,” she said, in favor of bringing art to all places, “big or small cities.”

At 76 years old, he says with a smile that “we don't talk about how wonderful it is to get older. You relax more, you know what you're doing, although you still don't know if it's right or wrong.”