Annie Leibovitz, as world-famous for her celebrity photography as the subjects of her portraits, shifted the focus to her own life to a sold-out auditorium last night.

About 440 students, staff and photography enthusiasts saw Leibovitz speak in Kane Hall in support of her latest book, A Photographer’s Life: 1990 – 2005.

“I don’t like the term ‘celebrity,’” Leibovitz said in an interview before the speech. “It doesn’t matter if they’re well known, as long as you’re loving what you do.”

Indeed, she focused more on her personal life than on her well-known subjects, as she reviewed her career over the past 15 years in the form of a slideshow, accompanied by a prepared speech.

As prepared as she may have been, however, she could not contain her emotion while discussing such personal topics as the death of her father, the birth of her children and the death of her long-time lover Susan Sontag from cancer.

“It’s bittersweet to come back to Seattle,” she said through tears. “We’re very close to the hospital,” she continued, referring to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where Sontag received a failed bone marrow transplant.

“Photographs take on new meaning when someone dies,” she said.

Sontag was not the only personal subject documented in the slide show. Leibovitz choked up again when she discussed the death of her father, which occurred a mere six weeks later. A picture of her nude pregnant self accompanied a brief dissertation on the joys of pregnancy.

“I suddenly became my age,” she said, in regard to pregnancy in her fifties.

The book, which chronicles her career as well as her personal life, was compiled after Sontag’s death and is largely in dedication to her, Leibovitz said.

Also covered in the presentation were pictures that ran the gamut of family photos, from landscapes to war-torn Sarajevo, to pictures of Demi Moore, Bill Gates and Robert DeNiro.

In compiling the book, she said she imagined that her lover was still beside her. She compared looking through and considering pictures from her archives to an archaeological dig.

“That’s when I started to discover these photographs that I didn’t even know I had,” she said.

She said that in essence what the book covers is the lifecycle from birth to death from a photographer’s perspective.

“[This book] is the closest thing to who I am that I’ve ever done,” she said.

Reporter Jeffrey Tripoli: news@thedaily.washington.edu