The provocative nude magazine cover portrait of actress Demi Moore, ever-so-pregnant and proud of it, ”felt so natural,” says New York photographer Annie Leibovitz, who shot the photograph for the August issue of Vanity Fair. ”I went out to shoot her and it felt like I was avoiding the obvious,”
Lebovitz said in a telephone interview. ”We were shooting her breasts and her face and I pulled (back) to shoot. Rather than try to hide that she was pregnant, we went for it.”
Leibovitz says she then began taking full-figure shots and Moore then commented, ”Wouldn`t this be incredible for the cover?”
Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown agreed. ”She (Moore) never felt more beautiful in her life. It was very natural to shoot it like this.”
Leibovitz says she`s surprised by the strong response that the cover-and inside shots that include Moore in a black bra and panties-has sparked.
Yet she admits: ”We knew it would be controversial.”
Leibovitz had taken wedding pictures for Moore and her husband, actor Bruce Willis, photographed Moore during in her first pregnancy, and then took baby pictures. ”I almost feel like their family,” she says.
She is, in fact, one of the most lionized portrait and commerical photographers working today. She spoke as she was about to board a plane to Germany on assignment for American Express.
