The LUMA Foundation, the Swiss nonprofit founded by Maja Hoffmann, has acquired the archives of Annie Leibovitz.
Over 8,000 photographs will go on view this May in an exhibition coinciding with the opening of the foundation’s Parc des Ateliers location in Arles, France.
The move comes as a part of LUMA’s Living Archives Program, which collaborates with living artists across the disciplines of photography, design, literature, film, and dance.
“Annie Leibovitz Archive Project #1: The Early Years”—which opens on May 27—will focus on the photographer’s work between 1968 and 1983 and is intended as the first of several projects dedicated to Leibovitz’s career-beginnings.
The show will also mark the first time that the archives become available to the public.
Opening with photographs taken when she was enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute as a painting major, the exhibition will go on to examine the artist’s work through 1983. During that time, Leibovitz began working for Rolling Stone, eventually becoming the magazine’s chief photographer in 1973 before resigning ten years later to photograph for Vanity Fair.
The exhibition is organized by Matthieu Humery, Director of the LUMA Foundation’s Living Archive Program, in collaboration with Leibovitz herself.
“The exhibit is the first in a series of interdisciplinary experimental initiatives currently being developed by the foundation in connection with the idea of the ‘living archive’, which will convene in Arles the bodies of work of a number of major artists and cultural practitioners from different fields,” the foundation said in a statement.
“‘Annie Leibovitz: Archive Project #1: The Early Years’ focuses on the artist’s earliest work as a way to more fully contextualize her widely recognized practice.”
“Annie Leibovitz: Archive Project #1: The Early Years” will be on view at LUMA Arles from May 27 – September 24, 2017.