Why did Annie Leibovitz sue Paolo Pizzetti about some photos?
Famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz faces losing everything today with just hours to go before she must repay a £16million loan – or lose her four homes and the rights to her life’s work. As if things weren’t bad enough, yesterday an Italian cameraman sued her for passing off his pictures as her own. Miss Leibovitz, 59, whose controversial pictures include a series of the Queen and 1991’s famous nude of a heavily pregnant Demi Moore, is said to earn at least £3million a year from Vanity Fair magazine, and freelance assignments. Her fame and the price tag for her work have grown since she first hit the headlines with a photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono curled naked in a foetal position, taken just hours before the ex-Beatle was shot in 1980. But she is struggling under a mountain of debt after a series of financial bungles. And yesterday Italian photographer Paolo Pizzetti claimed Miss Leibovitz used photos he took in Venice and Rome, and passed them off as her own in a 2009 ca
Annie Leibovitz is in serious money trouble and facing a copyright lawsuit. Leibovitz could lose the rights to all of her photographs – as well as her four homes – if she does not pay back a $24 million loan by Tuesday. In 2008, Leibovitz took out the $24M loan with Art Capital Group, and used her homes – three townhouses in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighborhood and one in Rheinbeck, New York – and the rights to her current and future work as collateral. Art Capital Group sued Leibovitz in July for breach of contract, claiming that she blocked the company from selling her photographs, BBC News reported. “We have clear contractual rights and will protect them in any scenario,” ACG spokesman Montieth Illingworth told the Associated Press. Read more at the link below. Sources: http://www.nydailynews.com/real_estate/2009/09/08/2009-09-08_photograher_annie_
