Annie Leibovitz was born in 1949 in Waterbury, Connecticut. She was the third of six children in a family with Jewish immigrant grandparents from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force so the family moved frequently during her childhood. Leibovitz developed an interest in the arts in high school and studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. She spent several months working on a kibbutz in Israel in 1969 to further develop her photography skills.