By Holly Stuart Hughes

In accepting the Lifetime Achievement award at the ICP Infinity Awards last night, Annie Leibovitz thanked by name practically every editor, photo editor and art director she has worked with from Rolling Stone to Vogue to Vanity Fair. She acknowledged that the award came at a time when she has made more news for her financial troubles than for her photography. “This is really a big deal, especially now,” said Leibovitz. “I’m having some difficult times right now.” Leibovitz has been named in two lawsuits for non payment of bills, and had taken out a large mortgage on a building she owns in New York City.

The 25th annual ICP Infinity Awards drew a crowd of 700 people to the Pier 60 event space in New York last night. Leibovitz told the audience that when she first heard she was receiving the award, “I thought, I’m too young,” but noted that many of the past recipients, including Irving Penn, who turns 92 later this month, are still working. “Photography isn’t something you retire from,” she said.

Writer and editor Gloria Steinem presented Leibovitz’s award. Steinem had hired Leibovitz to shoot for Ms magazine at a time when few women photographers had the equipment or studio space to shoot magazine covers. She called Leibovitz “the photographer of my time” who has photographed everyone from politicians to entrepreneurs to showgirls.

The Cornell Capa award went to Letizia Battaglia for her unflinching coverage of Mafia violence in Palermo, Sicily. In announcing the award, ICP director Willis "Buzz" Hartshorn said Battaglia exemplified what ICP founder Cornell Capa called "the concerned photographer."

This year's awards ceremony had a distinctly international flavor. Battaglia gave her acceptance speech through a translator. Rinko Kawauchi, who won for Art photography, delivered her speech first in Japanese and then in English. Leiko Shiga, the Young Photographer of the year, was accompanied by several family members who had flown from Japan for the occasion. Aveek Sen, who writes for the Calcutta edition of The Telegraph and won the award for Writing, said this was his first trip to New York. “I’ve bought so many books, I don’t think I can get on a plane and go back to India,” he said.

Dutch photojournalist Geert van Kesteren received the Photojournalism Award for Baghdad Calling, a book of his photos of Iraqi refugees and an exhibition of snapshots that refugees emailed to him. Van Kesteren said the Infinity Award honors his work and theirs.

British fashion photographer Tim Walker, whose book Tim Walker Pictures was published by Te Neues last year, won for Applied/Fashion/Advertising Photography. The Publication award went to Desert Cities by Austrian-born photographer Aglaia Konrad. ICP board member Gayle Greenhill received this year's ICP Trustee Award.

Several past Infinity Award winners were in the audience, including photographers Nathan Lyons, Joyce Tenneson, Craig McDean, Sylvia Plachy and Elinor Carucci and critic Vince Aletti.

This was the first ICP Infinity Awards since the death of ICP founder Cornell Capa, who died last year. The evening began with a video interview with Capa in which he described the recounting the founding of the museum. Hartshorn said he was proud that so many people attended the awards, and welcomed Hearst as the new sponsor for the evening. Getty Images had sponsored the Infinity Awards for the last eight years.

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