Women: New Portraits exhibition by Annie Leibovitz opens this week in East London

Women: New Portraits Exhibition by Annie Leibovitz with Exclusive Commissioning Partner UBS. Annie Leibovitz with her children Sarah, Susan and Samuelle Rhinebeck Copyright © Annie Leibovitz

It is no hyperbole to describe Annie Leibovitz as a strong candidate for most famous living photographer.

From the iconic image of a pregnant and naked Demi Moore to the last photograph of John Lennon, taken five hours before he was shot, there are few bona fide stars not to find themselves at the end of Leibovitz’s lens.

And this month, new work by Leibovitz will be in East London for the first leg of a world touring exhibition.

Women: New Portraits features newly-commissioned photographs that reflect the changes in the roles of women today.

The photographs, on display at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, continue a project Leibovitz started more than 15 years ago with her late partner, Susan Sontag.

That project, entitled Women, was, in Sontag’s words, a series of “photographs of people with nothing more in common than that they are women”.

It saw portraits of First Ladies and Hollywood stars alongside those of coal miners, domestic violence victims, a surgeon and an astronaut.

Women: New Portraits will feature work from the original series as well as the newly-commissioned photographs and other pictures taken in the interim.

The free exhibition is scheduled to visit nine other major global cities over the course of the year, though London is its first port of call.

Women: New Portraits is at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Wapping Wall, E1W 3SL from 16 January – 7 February 2016