Goldman Sachs holds the key to Leibovitz’s finances

Could Goldman Sachs, the Teflon-coated Wall Street investment bank, be poised to rescue Annie Leibovitz from her staggering financial troubles? The celebrated American portrait photographer faces a breach-of-contract lawsuit over a $24m loan which she took out earlier this year to consolidate several years of serious debt.

It emerged today that Goldman Sachs owns part of Leibovitz's loan and has offered to work with her to "resolve her financing needs", Goldman spokeswoman Andrea Raphael told New York magazine.

It was another creditor, Art Capital, a New York lender which uses art as collateral, which filed a suit against the former Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair photographer in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan on July 29.

Art Capital claims Leibovitz had reneged on an agreement to allow the company to sell photographs and real estate, including her Greenwich Village home, she had pledged to back the sum.

In backing the loan, Leibovitz - whose famous subjects have included John Lennon and Yoko Ono, a pregnant Demi Moore and Queen Elizabeth II - has risked her entire life's work, offering copyrights to every picture she has ever taken as collateral.

In February, when the 59-year-old took out the loan, the New York Times noted "one of the world's most successful photographers essentially pawned every snap of the shutter she had made or will make until the loans are paid off."

Leibovitz's spending is legendary. "Budget is not something that enters her consciousness," Anna Wintour, Vogue's editor-in-chief, said in the 2008 documentary, Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens. "But it's worth it because at the end of the day she gives you an image that nobody else can."

Leibovitz's demands became bigger with every shoot, adds Jane Sarkin, Vanity Fair's features editor, in the film. "Fire, rain, cars, airplanes, circus animals. Whatever she wanted, she got."

Leibovitz's debts top off a dark few years for the photographer. In the past five years both her parents and her long-time partner, the feminist writer and intellectual Susan Sontag, have died.

Leibovitz referred to her troubles when she accepted a lifetime achievement award from the International Center of Photography in May. "It means so much to me, you know, especially right now. It’s, it's a very sweet award to get right now. I'm having some tough times right now.” ·