missing sontag

I don’t want any make-up on her. I don’t want any of that crap.

Annie Leibowitz to the undertakers who were dressing Susan Sontag’s body for burial. As reported in the Guardian piece, My Time with Susan, on October 7.

Good god – have I been sleeping under a rock? To learn today that two of my favorite women in the world – Susan Sontag and Annie Leibowitz – were partners in the later years of Sontag’s life and I missed the whole thing… Goddammit.

But I’m so glad they were. It makes such perfect sense: It’s like hearing about two friends you’ve known forever -- loved dearly, each for their own gorgeous talents -- who found each other somehow. Perfect fit.

Leibowitz has published a book of photographs of Sontag’s last days. The Guardian published a beautiful piece a little over a week back about the book, and about their life together.

The photographs will soon be on display as part of a larger Leibowitz exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. (Unfortunately you just missed a wonderful special exhibition framed around Sontag’s On Photography that was hanging at the Met back in September.)