They were the ultimate New York power couple that nobody would actually call a couple. For fifteen years, the world’s most famous celebrity photographer and the world’s most formidable public intellectual lived in a sort of magnetic orbit around one another.
Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag met in 1988. Annie was there to take a jacket photo for Sontag’s AIDS and Its Metaphors. Apparently, Annie was so nervous she sweated through her clothes. She thought she wasn't smart enough to talk to the woman who literally wrote the book on photography (the seminal On Photography).
But Sontag was hooked. And so was Annie.
What followed was a decade and a half of intense, messy, intellectually rigorous, and fiercely private devotion. They never lived together—they had separate apartments in Manhattan that looked out at each other—but they were rarely apart.
The Secret That Wasn’t
Honestly, the "secret" of their relationship was the worst kept secret in the West Village. Everyone knew. But in the 90s, the labels we use now didn't really fit them, or rather, Sontag refused to let them fit. She was notoriously resistant to being "outed" by activists. She once famously said she didn't talk about her erotic life any more than her spiritual life because it was too complex and always ended up sounding "banal."
Basically, she didn't want to be a poster child. She wanted to be Susan Sontag.
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Annie, for her part, was the one who provided the stability. While Sontag was the fiery intellectual who would drag Annie to war-torn Sarajevo to document a production of Waiting for Godot, Annie was the one footing the bills and, quite literally, keeping the lights on. It was a lopsided dynamic that some observers found "shabby," but Annie never saw it that way. To her, Sontag was a mentor who pushed her to be better. "You're good," Sontag would tell her, "but you could be better."
That kind of bluntness would kill most relationships. For them, it was fuel.
When the Private Became Very Public
The real turning point in how we talk about Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag happened after Sontag died in 2004.
Annie released a book called A Photographer's Life: 1990–2005. It was a jarring, beautiful, and deeply controversial collection. It mixed Annie’s glossy celebrity work—the Demi Moores and the George Clooneys—with raw, snapshot-style photos of her own family and, most notably, Sontag’s final days.
People lost their minds over it.
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There were photos of Sontag in the hospital, frail and bloated from chemotherapy. There were photos of her on her deathbed. Sontag’s son, David Rieff, famously hated them, calling them "carnival images of celebrity death." He felt they stripped his mother of the dignity she had spent a lifetime cultivating.
But Annie felt she had to do it. "It's what I do," she said. She was a photographer; she processed her grief through the lens. By putting those photos in a book next to her professional work, she was finally saying: This was my life. This woman was my life.
Why the Relationship Between Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag Still Matters
It’s easy to look back and get hung up on the "were they or weren't they" aspect of their romance. But that’s kinda missing the point. Their partnership was a blueprint for a specific kind of creative collaboration that we don't see much of anymore.
- The Intellectual Polish: Sontag pushed Annie to move beyond just being a "celebrity photographer." The 1999 book Women was Sontag’s idea. She wanted a book that raised the "question of women," not just a gallery of pretty faces.
- The Creative Tension: They were opposites. One lived in the world of images; the other lived in the world of words and was deeply skeptical of how images could numb us to suffering.
- The Financial Reality: Annie reportedly spent millions supporting Sontag’s lifestyle and medical treatments. It was a domestic partnership in every sense of the word, even if the legal system at the time didn't recognize it as such.
Kinda makes you realize that "lover" or "friend" or "partner" are all just placeholders for something much bigger.
What Most People Get Wrong
People often think Sontag was the "boss" and Annie was the "student."
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While it's true Sontag mentored her, the influence went both ways. Sontag became an object of the camera in a way she never had been before Annie. Through Annie's lens, the "Dragon Lady" of American letters became human. We saw her in the bathtub. We saw her playing with Annie’s daughter on the beach. We saw the vulnerability that her prose often shielded.
It wasn't just a teacher and a pupil; it was a 15-year-long conversation.
How to Understand Their Legacy Today
If you want to really get what they were about, you have to look at the work they did together. Don't just look at the photos; read the essays Sontag wrote for Annie's books.
- Look for the "Internal" Portrait: Sontag taught Annie that a portrait isn't just about what someone looks like. It’s about their "interior." If you look at Annie’s work post-Sontag, it’s much more grounded, even the big-budget stuff.
- Study "Regarding the Pain of Others": This was Sontag’s final book, and you can see Annie’s influence all over it. It’s a book about how we look at images of suffering—something Annie was doing every day in her work.
- Accept the Complexity: Stop trying to label them. They lived in a gray area because that's where they were most comfortable.
Honestly, the story of Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag is a reminder that the most impactful relationships are often the ones that refuse to be simple. They were two of the most powerful women in their respective fields, and they chose to walk together for fifteen years, largely on their own terms.
To dig deeper into this history, you can start by picking up a copy of A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005. It is the most honest document of their time together. Also, check out the 2014 documentary Regarding Susan Sontag for a broader look at Sontag's life outside of her relationship with Annie. By looking at the intersection of Annie's visuals and Sontag's theories, you'll get a much clearer picture of how they changed the way we see the world.