Annie Leibovitz
John Lennon and Yoko Ono

THE REVIEW

"You may say I'm a dreamer ...But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us ...And the world will be as on" J.L.

This photo contains a story. The story of all stories.

It tells a universe.

It tells a poem.

The reverence of a man in love and completely subservient to the woman he loves. John Lennon is literally naked, with closed eyes, completely absorbed as he envelops, protects, declares, touches, kisses, and possesses her. There is incredible poetry in every detail, and it is quite striking to see this contrast between him, absolutely devoted, fragile, and defenseless, and her (Yoko Ono for the less aware), dressed, detached, with a distant gaze and almost "annoyed" by so much attention.

Ultimate metaphor on the fragility of emotional relationships. Where there is always one of the two more "engaged" who is gently (and often consciously) dominated, and the other, instead, more detached, more clear-headed and more determined in pulling the strings of the "couple’s game." An imbalanced relationship as is almost always the case in a relationship of two.

It works like this 80% of the time. At the beginning, the gap is small, almost imperceptible, masked and buried by emotion, passion, desire. Then... with time, age, and fatigue, the emotional distances increase and one of the two takes psychological control over the other. Progressively and inexorably.

Perhaps in this couple (besides being very famous) the fragile balance was already broken or so this photo published by the American edition of "Rolling Stone" in January 1981 seems to suggest, just weeks before the crazy act of a fan who would definitively break with a gunshot the dream of a man and an era in some ways unforgettable.

Unforgettable like the suspended moment of rare beauty experienced by John in this shot by the great American photographer Annie Leibovitz.

A timeless John Lennon, for a few moments stepping out of the human miseries of the here and now, involved in his intimate amorous ecstasy that involves us, disorients us, and truly moves us, revealing to us the enchanted beauty that a man can emanate in certain moments.

When he is truly in love with the woman he loves and knows how to give and give himself completely without asking for anything in return.