NEW YORK—Photographer Annie Leibovitz took Michael Jackson's portrait several times for Vanity Fair. Her images of him from 1989, shirt unbuttoned and frozen in dance like a ballet, were perhaps "iconic," the feel that Leibovitz strives for in her photography. Leibovitz and Jackson had more in common than just these images, however. Like Jackson, who had spent his fortune unwisely and found himself burdened with a $270 million dollar debt, Leibovitz has found herself in a financial battle over the publishing rights to her images after several ill-advised real estate purchases, including a three-building residence in New York's Greenwich Village, where she currently resides with her three children.

In May 2008, a private equity firm called Colony Capitol invested in Jackson's Neverland Ranch, saving Jackson's carnivalesque hideaway from foreclosure. Though he eventually lost the ranch, to a company partially owned by Colony Capital, he had saved the dream momentarily. Leibovitz was also living a dream. A New York magazine article published in August 2009 documents her unsustainable living and her "rampant spending." Eventually she was forced to take out a $24 million dollar loan with Art Capital, a specialty company who gives out short-term loans with art as collateral. She had to come up with $24 million dollars in one year to preserve the copyrights to her photography. Art Capital started to twitch when Leibovitz tried to sign deals with New York auction house Philips de Pury, and then later with Getty Images. They threatened to foreclose her house and become sole proprietors of Leibovitz' library of 100,000 photographs and approximately one million negatives. It was looking dire.

This past week, however, news has emerged of a white knight: Colony Capital. Leibovitz struck a deal with the company to pay off Art Capital. In return, Leibovitz and Colony Capital are planning a traveling exhibition of Leibovitz' photos and other "new projects." Is Colony Capital setting up a boutique debt relief system for celebrities with negotiable assets? According to Colony, this is actually an anomalous agreement, but if it works out there may be implications of a new business model. Meanwhile, Leibovitz will return to her high-budget shoots photographing celebrities, while retaining her several properties, consequence free from her overspending days. Sounds an awful lot like Neverland to me.