The Royal House announced the death of Elizabeth II on the networks with an iconic image by photographer Jane Bown, taken in 2006 to mark the monarch’s 80th birthday
“Head-and-shoulders portrait photo of Queen Elizabeth II (b. 1926) sitting to the right, with her head slightly turned to the camera. Look ahead and smile. He wears a three-breasted hat. pearl necklace, pearl earrings, a light-colored jacket and a light-colored blouse.” This is the technical description filed with the Royal Collection Trust of the portrait with which Buckingham Palace illustrated Thursday’s announcement of His Majesty’s death on Twitter and Instagram. The photo was taken in February 2006 to commemorate the monarch’s 80th birthday (two months to go) and was taken by Jane Bown. A photojournalist, like the Queen of England, eternal.
Bown worked for ‘The Observer’ for 65 years before dying in 2014, in his late 90s. A racing professional who rarely left black and white — like when she portrayed PJ Harvey in 1995 — and never betrayed her old cameras with new technologies. Coming from a humble family left her in the care of relatives, a Dorset native, she had a difficult childhood and took her first photographs at age 13 using a modest machine her aunts bought for her. That’s where his greatness began.
Mythology and history. Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Orson Welles, Michael Caine, Truman Capote, Woody Allen, Keith Richards, Bette Davis, Jean Cocteau or the philosopher Bertrand Russell, his first work for the British newspaper, published in 1949, has reached its goal. of his best-known photographs is that of playwright Samuel Beckett in 1976. Dark, deep, strong and penetrating. It has its history. The author, on the run from the flashes, exited a rehearsal in a London theater through a door leading into an alleyway. Jane waited there to shoot the perfect portrait in thirty seconds.
The statue of Elizabeth II is the result of the meeting of two octogenarians. The sovereign himself chose him for her portrait. The Queen, who is about to turn 80: Jane, 81 fulfilled. In Buckingham Palace, two women on whom geopolitics and the images of a century have revolved move according to the dance of light. Elizabeth II sits in a high-backed chair. The photographer flutters around her. He fights against the natural hieraticism of his model and the betrayal of the sun seeping through the windows of the Blue Room. Take three snapshots. Luke Todd, responsible for the graphic archive of ‘The Observer’, recalls the elements the photographer needed in her sessions: “A ‘spark'” of recognition between her and the subject, good natural light and as few people as possible” Jan works alone. “I wouldn’t be able to work with assistants. I wouldn’t know what to tell them,” he confessed in an interview. Nor does he give instructions to his protagonists. He watches them, gives them confidence and shoots.
Todd: “Work quickly, quietly and discreetly. The innate ability to put the subject at ease is the key to his respectful and revealing portraits.” The session with Elizabeth II is short-lived. The photojournalist spends no more than ten or fifteen minutes per session. “Often it ends before the model realizes what has happened,” says the editor. “Some photographers take pictures, but I try find them,” she always repeated. Another of his proclamations: “Photographers should never be seen or heard.”
The image illustrating the obituary shows Elizabeth II, like the Gioconda, with a peculiar rictus on her face. How is it achieved? The legend tells the following. An aide to the monarch, her trusted assistant, suddenly enters the room. Seeing a close and familiar face invading her field of vision, the queen turns her gaze slightly toward her. He relaxes, smiles very subtly and his eyes lose their institutional character. The sovereign gives way to the woman. friend. The light accompanies and amplifies this moment. Jane catches him.
His death in 2014 garnered condolences from the profession and a lengthy anecdote. Lord Snowdon called it the English Cartier-Bresson. In that closet full of anecdotes comes the revelation in the documentary ‘Looking for Light’, according to which the photographer separated her professional life from her personal life so perfectly that during the week she stood up for her husband and her three children in his home. family back home in the countryside and on weekends he traveled to London, sitting at his desk in ‘The Observer’ and humbly waiting for the editor to assign him his stories. He never protested a story.
Source: La Verdad
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