A High Mark

I’ve had a stressful couple of weeks, so I spent my Sunday decompressing at one of my favorite places with one of my favorite persons: the High Museum of Art with the Beloved Ex. Sunday was the closing day for the Annie Leibovitz exhibit. I hate hitting a show on the last day because it’s too damn crowded, but the boy and I just couldn’t sync our summer schedules to see the show.

I was most eager to see Leibovitz’s more personal work — particularly those of Susan Sontag in her final years — but I was happily surprised to see one of my favorite photographs hanging just inside the gallery door:

Mark Morris (Annie Leibovitz, 1988)

This photo ran with a Rolling Stone interview of Mark Morris in the late 1980s, and I had the tattered page hanging on many a cubicle wall for many a year (now I have four postcards of it!). Yes, Morris is beautiful here — that hair, those lips, those blue eyes — but it’s the attitude, the confidence I love. That’s the ‘tude I want to exude every day. This photo also leaves me craving a ciggie … and I’m not a smoker. Isn’t that the sexiest ciggie you’ve seen in ages?

I’m lucky enough to have seen Morris and his troupe a couple of times, once when the White Oak Dance Project performed in Atlanta. (White Oak Plantation, where they stayed while developing the performance) is near Thomasville, in south Georgia.) Mark Morris and Mikhail Baryshnikov, together on the Fox stage. Yes, I’ll die a happy woman.

The exhibit was better than expected. Many of the photos on display are now-iconic shots, thanks to Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. The shots of Susan Sontag during her illness and when she died were lovely, heartbreaking — as were Leibovitz's personal photos of her parents and her children.

The Beloved Ex had to get back to his side of town, so I got some High time on my own — going back through the Leibovitz galleries to spend more time with the Morris photo and the Sontag and family series, wandering through the permanent collection, enjoying the quiet in such a crowded space.

Now I’m a bit more relaxed — and full of ‘tude.

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