I went to see Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life 1990-2005 last week at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.
I see it's been extended into April.
Surprising to me that this collection captures the struggle of life and death in today's youth and beauty and fame and wealth obsessed world.
Though once upon a time it was not unknown to take a funeral assembly photograph with the open casket, I wonder if any of these famous people would let her photograph their corpse - or would any magazine publish a photograph of the corpse of a famous "it"/"in" thing.
But here in this collection Leibovitz includes death, alongside youth and beauty, and fame and wealth. She photographs indiscriminately and unashamedly.
She shows photos of her dead lover, Susan Sontag, and photos of her parents in bed just days before her father died - extraordinary family documents in this day and age.
It wasn't the big portraits hung in crowded halls that impressed me most. I only became fascinated when I entered the little corridor of snapshots perhaps used to plan this exhibition.
They are all pinned to a board in horizontal lines across two walls. I think it's effect is stronger than the actual exhibition because all the images are here together in a confined space.
The strongest photograph for me was an abandoned bike on a sidewalk smeared with blood in Sarajevo - a sniper had just murdered a teenage boy.
The plaque beside a beautiful photograph of her mother tells how she cried behind the camera as she took the photograph despite her mother's concerns that she would look old - that's what her daughter wanted to capture and her mother knew it but allowed her to take it anyway.
It is a picture of honesty, a communication between mother and daughter. But that don't pay the bills. I bought a copy of Vanity Fair at the airport for $10 - the cost of entry to the collection is $15.
Correction: Well, almost today ... at least just three days ago