Annie Lennox 'Bares' Soul in New Album

June 19 -- Annie Lennox sings as though she is at last letting down her guard and revealing her secrets, opening a flood gate of searing emotional pain and fleeting moments of pure joy.

But now the woman who became famous as the voice of the Eurythmics is revealing herself in a whole new way, releasing her third solo album, Bare, and exhibiting her photography for the first time.

At 48, Lennox is drawn to the conflict between women and true beauty — in a struggle against what sells. That's apparent in the artist's sounds and images: she takes risks other commercial artists wouldn't dare.

"I think, in a way, it is the antithesis of glamour," Lennox told Primetime's Chris Cuomo as she previewed her photo exhibit in New York.

The exhibit features 30 self-portraits. Lennox says she became so fed up with celebrity that she swore she'd never do another photo shoot, so she started taking photographs of herself.

"I've been very interested in aesthetic beauty, and most women are," she says.

"Even young girls — children — we are encouraged to look pretty. So I thought, 'Do I try to compete with this youth market culture that I'm in, or do I go the opposite way and show my fragilities, expose the fact that my skin is getting older?'" ‘I Write What I Write’

The photos project an almost unthinkable degree of honesty for a woman who has sold millions of albums. But perhaps that's why so many women are drawn to her music and identify with her struggles.

"I write what I write," she says. "If I wanted to be a professional songwriter, I'd be writing for Celine Dion, wouldn't I?"

Still, she's not so comfortable being thought of as a feminist hero.

"I'll read something that says women identify strongly with me and I go, 'Oh, maybe they do, OK," she says.

"I just feel that the odds are stacked against us. And that we need to empower ourselves. But in doing so, we threaten men. And there's a bit of difficulty there. Venus and Mars. Tricky." A Red Flame of Hair Captures the MTV GenerationFrom the moment she burst on the music scene as a major recording artist in the 1980s, Lennox aspired to more than just making music. She wanted to make waves.