PHOTOGRAPHS BY SNOWDON: A RETROSPECTIVE

SIGNED TWICE by LORD SNOWDON

By Lord Snowdon, (formerly Antony Armstrong-Jones)

Lord Snowdon, first husband of Princess Margaret, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II, and a distinguished photographer.

Foreword by Charles Saumarez Smith

Publisher: National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Publication Date: 2000 BRITISH FIRST EDITION

This is a Large Red HARDCOVER in Fine Condition with 240 pages, articles by contributors, chronology,

publications, index along with 220 photographs of which there are Color Photographs and Black and White Photographs of Famous People.

The dust jacket in fine condition.  

Size of Book is 12 1/4 inches by 11 inches.

1. Signed by Snowden on half title page.

2. Inscribed by Snowden with drawing on front endpage

"Dear Bill , Happy Christmas , I do hope you don't have this already. With Love , Antony"

A variety of Snowdon's work covering the complete range of Snowdon's photography for over 50 years, from his early reportage on the London of the 1950s to his photographs of leading figures in the arts of the year 2000. This book includes his fashion tableaux; the pioneering examples of reportage for "Life" magazine and "Sunday Times"; still-life and landscape; studies of the ballet and theatre; and Snowdon's renowned celebrity portraits.

A magnificent survey of Snowdon's work, accompanied by several perceptive essays.

CONTENTS

Foreword by Charles Saumarez Smith

Sponsor's Foreword

Dedication

Carl Toms

Patrick Kinmonth

Georgina Howell

Marjorie Wallace

Anthony Powell

Drusilla Beyfus

Simon Callow

Chronology

Publications

Acknowledgements

Index

Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective. In 2000, the National Portrait Gallery in London mounted a large retrospective exhibition of his work, which included 181 photographs. A year later, this exhibition traveled to the Yale Center for British Art for its only American showing.

Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective covered fifty years of this remarkable photographer’s work. From an early stage, Snowdon deliberately moved away from the stately and stuffy English version of fashion and theatrical photography. He used a miniature camera and launched a new turning in British photography. Intimacy, intensity, and informality characterize his portraits of artists and writers, actors, and designers. “You have to strip people of their poses and disguises,” he once remarked. Whether it is the art historian and spy, Anthony Blunt, caught with a slide reflected in his eyeball, or J.R.R. Tolkien, gripped in middle earth by the vast roots of a spreading oak, British society, English writers and artists, performers and designers, nobles and commoners were caught with a new candor and style.

Photographers set the tone and carry the tune and atmosphere of the times. Snowdon caught the swinging sixties of London better than any photographer and has continued to be the poet and recorder of London as a center of artistic and creative vitality. This exhibition included some of Snowdon’s photojournalism, documenting locations abroad as well as the treatment of the mentally ill at home. “I am always suspicious if photographs are too beautiful,” he observed. A friend and associate of the famous and the glamorous, Snowdon surprises with his range of sympathy. This retrospective dramatized a rounded career with sharp edges.

MORE ABOUT =Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon GCVO RDI (7 March 1930 – 13 January 2017), commonly known as Lord Snowdon, was a British photographer and film-maker. His first marriage was to Princess Margaret, younger daughter of King George VI and the sister of Queen Elizabeth II. After university, Armstrong-Jones began a career as a photographer in fashion, design and theatre. His stepmother had a friend who knew Baron the photographer; Baron visited Armstrong-Jones in his London flat, which doubled as his work studio. Baron, impressed, agreed to bring on Armstrong-Jones as an apprentice, first on a fee-paying basis  but eventually, as his talent and skills became apparent to Baron, as a salaried associate.

Much of his early commissions were theatrical portraits, often with recommendations from his uncle Oliver Messel, and "society" portraits highly favoured in Tatler,

which, in addition to buying a lot of his photographs, gave him byline credit for the captions.

He later became known for his royal studies, among which were the official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh for their 1957 tour of Canada.

He was also an early contributor to Queen magazine, the magazine founded by his friend Jocelyn Stevens.

In the early 1960s, Armstrong-Jones became the artistic adviser of The Sunday Times Magazine, and by the 1970s had established himself as one of Britain's most respected photographers. Though his work included everything from fashion photography to documentary images of inner city life and the mentally ill, he is best known for his portraits of world notables (the National Portrait Gallery has more than 100 Snowdon portraits in its collection), many of them published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The Daily Telegraph magazine.

His subjects include Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Leslie Caron, Lynn Fontanne, David Bowie, Elizabeth Taylor, Rupert Everett, Anthony Blunt, David Hockney, Princess Grace of Monaco, Diana, Princess of Wales, Barbara Cartland, Raine Spencer (when she was Lady Lewisham), Desmond Guinness, British prime minister Harold Macmillan, Iris Murdoch, Tom Stoppard, Vladimir Nabokov and J. R. R. Tolkien.

In 1968 he made his first documentary film, Don't Count the Candles, for the US television network CBS, on the subject of aging. It won seven awards including two Emmys. This was followed by Love of a kind (1969), about the British and animals, Born to be small (1971) about people of restricted growth and Happy being happy (1973).

In October 1981 a group portrait by Snowdon of the British rock band Queen was used on the cover of their Greatest Hits album. In 2000 A Snowdon portrait of Freddie Mercury was used on the cover of his The Solo Collection box set.

In 2000, Armstrong-Jones was given a retrospective exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective, which travelled to the Yale Center for British Art the following year. More than 180 of his photographs were displayed in an exhibition that honoured what the museums called "a rounded career with sharp edges".

Snowdon was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society – he was awarded the Hood Medal of the Society in 1978 and the Progress Medal in 1985.

In 2006, Tomas Maier, creative director of the Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta, sought Snowdon to photograph his Fall/Winter 2006 campaign.

Over 100 of his photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Designs and inventions == Armstrong-Jones co-designed (in 1963, with Frank Newby and Cedric Price) the "Snowdon Aviary" of the London Zoo

(which opened in 1964); he later said it was one of his proudest creations, affectionately calling it the "birdcage". He also had a major role in designing

the physical arrangements for the 1969 investiture of his nephew Prince Charles as Prince of Wales.

He was granted a patent for a type of electric wheelchair in 1971.

Philanthropy and charity == During his royal marriage, he was patron of the National Youth Theatre, the Contemporary Art Society for Wales,

the Welsh Theatre Company, and the Civic Trust for Wales. He was also President of the British Theatre Museum.

In June 1980 Lord Snowdon started an award scheme for disabled students. This scheme, administered by the Snowdon Trust, provides grants and scholarships for students with disabilities.

In the 1960s, he served in the capacity of a council member of the Polio Research Fund, as it was known before it was renamed the National Fund for Research into Crippling Diseases. He served as a trustee of the National Fund for Research into Crippling Diseases (since renamed Action Medical Research). He was president for England of the International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981. He was provost of the Royal College of Art from 1995 to 2003.

Death == Lord Snowdon died peacefully at his home in Kensington on 13 January 2017, aged 86.

Awards and honours

1. GCVO: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, 7 July 1969

2. He was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal and an Honorary Fellowship in 1985.

3. In 1989, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the University of Bath.