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Access Atlanta > Blog > Archives > 2007 > May > 11 > Entry
Even a queen can look a lot like her mother
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Photographer Annie Leibovitz had just a half-hour to take her fairytale-like portrait of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, which was commissioned for Her Majesty’s May 3-8 visit to the United States. Leibovitz told reporters Friday about the shoot during a walk-through of her retrospective show opening today at the High Museum of Art.
The portrait isn’t included in the show, which features some of her most famous photos of celebrities from 1990-2005 (remember the nude shot of Demi Moore in late pregnancy?).
Leibovitz said she went through the queen’s wardrobe and looked at books about her jewelry to decide what the monarch should wear. The portrait shows the queen sitting in an opulent, unlit room in Buckingham Palace, gazing wistfully through an open window at the palace gardens as storm clouds gather. She is wearing a pale gold brocade dress, fur stole and magnificent diamond necklace.
The queen’s silvery, other-worldly quality in the photo was helped by the fact that “she is an 81-year-old woman with gray hair and very pale skin,” said Leibovitz, who enhanced the natural light with a small strobe.
Critics have noted the similarity to formal portraits of the queen’s mother by the late English fashion photographer Cecil Beaton. Leibovitz said that was deliberate: She studied Beaton’s old photos before her session with the queen in March.
Hoping to be heard
At first glance, Saturday night’s “Boys Night Out” songwriters concert at Red Light Cafe in Midtown featuring Mike Rickard, Wayne Fishell, Lucas Mire and Sean Kagalis, with opener Richard Solomon, appears much like any other booking at the music venue.
The boys in question, however, all happen to be gay.
“There’s definitely that stereotype out there that all gay men ever listen to is club music,” Rickard told us Friday. “But I don’t play to backing tracks. I perform with an acoustic guitar. A big part of this for us is letting people know that our music is out there. We’re going to just be up there, talking about our lives.”
By singing openly about same-sex relationships, Fishell says he’s under no illusion that commercial radio is suddenly going to embrace his songs. “No one is ever going to tell me how to write a song,” he says. For him to avoid writing about men in his love songs “would be dishonest. The whole point is that human emotion is human emotion.”
Mire says he is just looking for the opportunity to play in a venue where people actually listen to the performers and for the chance to “cross-pollinate our audiences.”
“It’s tough out there to spread the word as an independent artist, gay or straight,” Mire says. “Believe me, I’ve played lots of events where no one listens to you. This promises to be a terrific experience.”
Mire, Rickard and Fishell have all recently produced well-received indie CDs as well.
Doors open at 7 p.m. Solomon opens at 7:30 p.m., and Rickard, Fishell, Miré and Kagalis go on at 8 p.m.
My, what big bugs!
We’ll concede that “Big Bugs and Killer Plants” aren’t the typical elements present at a media cocktail party. However, since it was a gorgeous spring evening Thursday at the Atlanta Botanical Garden (with a complete absence of pesky publicists), we happily took in New York sculptor David Rogers’ zany wooden bugs perched around the grounds, while they vaguely threatened the Midtown skyline. Patrons especially gravitated to Rogers’ menacing praying mantis sculpture with razor-sharp claws and the odd insect-eating pitcher-shaped killer plants from the Philippines. Our faves? — the tiny bright blue poison frogs from northern South America. Until the miniature things hopped from leaf to leaf (behind a thick pane of glass, mind you), they appeared to be ceramic.
For info: www.atlantabotanicalgarden.org
Coupling
Actor/comic Nick Cannon and Victoria’s Secret model Selita Ebanks are engaged.
Cannon proposed on bent knee this week in New York’s Times Square as the words, “Selita will you marry me?” flashed on a giant TV screen, Cannon’s publicist, Tracy Nguyen, said.
Ebanks, 24, said yes. Cannon then presented her with a 15-carat diamond ring that he helped design.
The couple met at a Super Bowl party in Miami in February.
In the past, the 26-year-old rapper and host of MTV’s “Wild ‘N Out” has been romantically linked with socialite Kim Kardashian and singer-actress Christina Milian.
Cannon’s screen roles include the shot-in-Atlanta “Drumline.”
High five
Top downloaded TV episodes this week
1. “Heroes,” “The Hard Part”
2. “The Office,” “Women’s Appreciation”
3. “24,” “2-3 a.m.”
4. “Lost,” “The Brig”
5. “Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Other Side of This Life”
— Source: iTunes
Celebrity birthdays
Saturday: Composer Burt Bacharach is 79. Talk show host Tom Snyder is 71. Comedian George Carlin is 70. Singer Steve Winwood is 59. Singer Billy Squier is 57. Country singer Kix Brooks of Brooks and Dunn is 52. Actor Ving Rhames is 46. Actor Emilio Estevez is 45. Actress Vanessa Williams (TV’s “Soul Food,” “Melrose Place”) is 44. Actor Stephen Baldwin is 41. Actress Kim Fields is 38. Actor Jason Biggs (“American Pie”) is 29. Actor Malcolm David Kelley (“Lost”) is 15.
Sunday: Actress Bea Arthur is 85. Actor Harvey Keitel is 68. Singer Stevie Wonder is 57. Comedian Stephen Colbert (“The Colbert Report”) is 43. Singer Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish is 41. Bassist Mickey Madden of Maroon 5 is 28.
Contributing: Kirsten Tagami and news services
If you have a tip, call 404-526-2749. Or fax 404-526-5509. Or e-mail: buzz@ajc.com.
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