Annie Leibovitz, the early years: Nearly 4,000 photos on view in L.A.

Annie Leibovitz began her creative life like so many other photographers of her generation: with a basic SLR camera and some black-and-white film.

Years before she set a standard for inventive portraiture, Leibovitz was an art student shooting pictures of her life and family, showing a flair for the stylishly raw and playful, inspired by her love for the pictures of Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson. When a little-known magazine called Rolling Stone hired her in 1970, she brought that same eye to pictures of rock stars and filmmakers, the 1972 presidential campaign trail and a shotgun ride with literary outlaws Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe.