Anna Lou, Roy and Me

We were a band of five in high school – each an artist in a different media. We regularly skipped school together to assist in someone’s project. Often, it was to serve as models in one of Anna Lou’s crazy photo shoots – lying in the bottom of an empty swimming pool, or standing above it holding different colored balloons for her to take color photos of our shadows at the bottom, or scampering in Rock Creek park with leaves in our hair. In winter, careening around the park in her TR3, which had neither heat nor a defroster, my job was to leap out and throw snow on the windshield so that Anna Lou could see to drive.

A few years after high school, I was visiting with Anna Lou in her Berkeley, California loft. I lived down the road with a rock band in Crockett, California. She had a bed that swayed from the ceiling with heavy chains. She taught me how to eat artichokes. She was still trying to make it in photography, and I recall asking her whether she thought she could actually make a living taking pictures. Was she planning to be a wedding or bar mitzvah photographer perhaps?

A couple days later, she once again needed me to model for her. Her boyfriend Chris had a photo assignment from Time magazine, but needed help.  It was early in 1969, and Time was developing an edition on the uses and abuses of the American flag.  Anna Lou had an idea.

We drove into downtown Berkeley and I spent most of the day with a camera in my face, or nearby. I had no idea what Anna Lou had in mind. I just hung out with folks and let her do her thing.

A few months later, I received a worried phone call from my mother back in Maryland.  “Sally? Are you in Time magazine?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Anna Lou worked on something a few months ago.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s you. And you’re opposite Roy Rogers,” she told me. “For the centerfold. It says: ‘Spangled Easy Rider in Berkeley.’”

“How about that,” I said.  Didn’t seem like that big a deal at the time.

“But I think she’s changed her name. It says: ‘Annie Liebowitz.’”

“Weird,” I responded. “Maybe she didn’t want it to be confused with her wedding photo job,” and hung up.