Rolling Stones

When Leibovitz returned to the United States in 1970, she started her career as staff photographer for Rolling Stone magazine.

In 1973, publisher Jann Wenner named Leibovitz chief photographer of Rolling Stone, a job she would hold for 10 years.

Leibovitz worked for the magazine until 1983, and her intimate photographs of celebrities helped define the Rolling Stone look.

While working for Rolling Stone, Leibovitz learned that she could work for magazines and still create personal work of her family,

which for her was the most important: "You don't get the opportunity to do this kind of intimate work except with the people you love,

the people who will put up with you. They’re the people who open their hearts and souls and lives to you. You must take care of them."

Leibovitz photographed the Rolling Stones in San Francisco in 1971 and 1972, and served as the concert-tour photographer for the Rolling Stones'

Tour of the Americas '75. Her favorite photo from the tour was a photo of Mick Jagger in an elevator.

John Lennon

On December 8, 1980, Leibovitz had a photo shoot with John Lennon for Rolling Stone, and she promised him he would make the cover.

She had initially tried to get a picture with just Lennon alone, as Rolling Stone wanted, but Lennon insisted that both he and Yoko Ono be on the cover.

Leibovitz then tried to re-create something like the kissing scene from the couple's Double Fantasy 1980 album cover, a picture Leibovitz loved.

She had John remove his clothes and curl up next to Yoko on the floor. Leibovitz recalls,

What is interesting is she said she'd take her top off and I said, "Leave everything on"—‌not really preconceiving the picture at all.

Then he curled up next to her and it was very, very strong. You couldn't help but feel that he was cold and he looked like he was clinging on to her.

I think it was amazing to look at the first Polaroid and they were both very excited. John said, "You've captured our relationship exactly.

Promise me it'll be on the cover." I looked him in the eye and we shook on it.[citation needed]

Leibovitz was the last person to professionally photograph Lennon‍—‌he was shot and killed five hours later.

A month or so later, Rolling Stone magazine gave grieving music fans his "last image". The photograph was subsequently re-created in 2009 by

John and Yoko's son Sean Lennon posing with his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl, with male/female roles reversed (Sean clothed, Kemp naked), and by Henry Bond and Sam Taylor-Wood in their YBA pastiche October 26, 1993.