ART REVIEW : Retrospective Examines a Photojournalist’s Art : Photography: Annie Leibovitz’s pictures strip away the personas of media celebrities with wit and affection.

Annie Leibovitz’s first real photo assignment was a picture of John Lennon for the cover of Rolling Stone. It was 1970, she was 21 and still a student.

A decade later, the former Beatle was the subject of her most memorable image--that vaguely shocking icon where he straddles Yoko Ono in fetal nudity was taken on Dec. 8, 1980. A few hours later, he was shot to death by a unhinged admirer.

Now Leibovitz is 45 and about as well-known as many of her subjects. She has won a heap of awards as a photojournalist. She’s the object of a full-scale international traveling retrospective just opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art titled “Annie Leibovitz, Photographs 1970-1990.”

In many ways the Lennon portrait with its pathetic childlike exhibitionism is the artist’s leitmotif. Her pictures provide a study of 20 years when the world became addicted to celebrity. Consumers of media made its actors into presences more vivid than family or friends. The actors came to feel that mere fame was not enough. They had to transform themselves into that peculiar entity called a “celebrity”--someone more renown for being constantly on public view than for whatever it is they do. In order to be real in this milieu, one must be transformed into an illusion. Leibovitz helps foster those illusions with an unusual mixture of wit and affection.

In the ‘60s, being famous was something fun. Andy Warhol promised we’d all experience it for 15 minutes. Leibovitz’s photographs of him remind us that his most dramatic moment of media fame came June 3, 1968, when he was shot by a former admirer. The hoopla would have lasted longer but the media were distracted by the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

By now the celebrity cult has grown into a kind of monstrosity that rivets the world’s attention on a former football player and television huckster accused of murdering his wife and her friend. And no wonder Leibovitz depicts Roseanne and Tom Arnold as a couple of mud-wrestlers.

Leibovitz operates like thousands of other graphic artists--she’s slick, stylish, eclectic and witty. She’s even iconoclastic when it’s socially acceptable. What makes her special is the way she pushes the envelope just far enough to achieve density. In her hands topical comedy becomes a subtle morality play. It tells us that the celebrity sphere is a ring of Purgatory reserved for those so insecure they must constantly ask the world for permission to just be themselves.

Leibovitz’s world is a glamorous, painful, hectic, hypocritical, sometimes lethal place. We see the exhaustion and loneliness of show folk on the road in the faces of Mick Jagger, Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles, all still bravely playing their parts. Jane Fonda or Joan Baez try to get a moment’s peace with their men and, bang, somebody turns up with a camera. Try to smile, Tom.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for these people? They asked for this, after all. Their poignancy is all paradox. They wanted to be rich, powerful and famous and that has its price.

Two images get close to the bone. In one, Bob Dylan waters a pathetic little lawn in an anonymous apartment court while wearing white satin. The other shows a presidential honor guard rolling up the red carpet as Helicopter One rises. The unseen passenger is Richard Nixon in disgrace.

None of this has any resonance unless we assume that inside these public people there is a private one capable of reflection. When we look at Liberace or the ancient stripper Sally Rand in their sequins and rhinestones it’s pretty clear there is nobody home but self-delusion. That’s kind of lovable.

Leibovitz finds the most doubt in writers. Authors like Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne look distracted--as if wondering if this kind of notoriety is really necessary. Norman Mailer appears to relish acting macho in the limelight.

The most unflattering portrayals are reserved for those--like Donald Trump--who are famous only for being ruthlessly rich. Everybody else, notably the movie people, have ironic or authentic fun allowing their complex personalities to be reduced to visual one-liners. Often Leibovitz hits veins of insight by playing against type.

Bette Midler was seen as kind of camp female female-impersonator until Leibovitz laid her down and brought out her sweetness by covering her with roses. Clint Eastwood is the avenging Dirty Harry to most of us, but Leibovitz was right on when she trussed him up like a cowboy about to be burned at the stake. Eastwood appeals to people who see themselves as victims. Steve Martin appears delighted to do an impersonation of a Franz Kline painting.

Impressively organized by the International Center of Photography in conjunction with the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the exhibition’s curators are Willis Hartshorn and William Stapp. LACMA curator Robert Sobiezek supervised the local installation.

A handsome catalogue is more complete than the show itself and in some ways more rewarding. It’s nice to look at photographs sitting down.

* “Annie Leibovitz, Photographs 1970-1990,” L.A. County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., to Feb. 26, closed Mondays and Tuesdays, (213) 857-6000.