Lord Snowdon: Taking photographs is a very nasty thing to do

By Elizabeth Grice Published: 7:30AM GMT 05 March 2010

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Previous of Images Next Lord Snowdon at home in Kensington Photo: CLARA MOLDEN 1967: Lord Snowdon with Princess Margaret Photo: REX

Most photographers try to settle a great dialog with their subjects. Lord Snowdon prefers to let them meal a bit. "Im not a great one for chatting people up since the phoney," he says. "I dont instruct people to feel at ease. You instruct a bit of edge. There are utterly long, agonised silences. I love it. Something bizarre competence happen. I mean, receiving photographs is a really nasty thing to do. Its really cruel."

Photographs, he says, are not value framing and unresolved on the wall. "I dont similar to photographs. Theyre all right for pinning up." Apart from family snaps, the usually dual portraits from a career travelling 60 years that reliable him as one of the 20th centurys majority innovative photographers, are dimly hung in a prolonged slight mezzanine heading to his studio.

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One is a proposal design of a windblown Princess Margaret, silhouetted opposite the sky on a vessel in the Caribbean prior to prolonged after they were tied together in 1960. She has created on the mount: "To my heavenly Tony, with all my love, Margaret." The other, a hazed mural of the singer Marlene Dietrich at the Caf de Paris, London, in 1955. On it she has scrawled for him: "Still seeking at you! Marlene."

Perversely, he claims that the thing hes proudest of is "the bird cage", by that he equates to the unconventional Snowdon Aviary he written for London Zoo in 1963. He unsuccessful his second-year design exams and was asked to go down from Cambridge ("there was a pointed disproportion in in between being sent down and asked to go down"), so it stays the usually construction to his name. He produces a small bullion indication of it, mounted on quartz, done by the former Crown Jeweller, Andrew Grima. Snowdon points out with beady compensation that Grima longed for out one of the majority critical struts.

Did he know what he was going to do after Cambridge? "Still dont. But Id regularly taken photographs. I pull badly. Photography"s majority simpler than drawing." Has he entered the digital age? "I havent got the faintest thought what digital means. Dont instruct to know about it. I similar to film, preferably black and white. I similar to gadgets but not camera gadgets. Ive got a mobile phone. I think the in the lavatory."

On the eve of his 80th birthday, Snowdon is still working, even though he is crippled from a revisitation of childhood polio and has to take cinema from his wheelchair. Last week, he was photographing ornithology farmers at the British Belgian Bantam Club, saying no misdate whatsoever in the assignment.

He objects to being called a multitude or stately photographer, though he has been a bit of both. "Im usually an ordinary, run-of-the-mill photographer you do reportage," he says. "I dont think Ill ever give up. Not a hope." Does he have a prime photograph? "Yes." Pause. "I havent taken it yet."

He once confessed he was so distressed prior to a pursuit that he would lay in his car praying that his theme would be away. He was frightened to open the pouch containing his prints from the lab. Even now, he feels trepidation.

Did he ever instruct to do anything else with his life? "Oh, yes. I played Peter Pan when I was seven."

Other than some-more work, what is he formulation for his 81st year? "Lunch."

Lord Snowdons poise of the agonised overpower relates well over his print shoots. A multiple of his deafness and an inventive arms depot of inclination for deflecting personal questions have review with him a sort of written ping-pong. As shortly as the turn falls to the floor, theres overpower followed by a small pleasant but insignificant story from his past, a square of mimicry, a non-sequitur or the suggest of a potion of wine. "Do you recollect Wilfred Pickles?" he inquires vaguely, suitable of nothing.

Apart from the written feints, there is an unconstrained batch of inventive things he has done and loves to show off. Some are obvious diversionary strategy but all of them intriguing. Snowdon has the mind and aptitude of an contriver and the inlet of a unsentimental joker. In the march of an hour, I am introduced to a dragonfly done out of reserve pins, a small indication of the birdhouse he done for the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at the Royal Lodge, Windsor (it got him the London Zoo commission), a shining blue tumbler he designed, utilizing pieces of white thermometer potion he picked up from a bureau floor, "roughs" from a set of Royal Doulton aquamarine cooking plates he written for the Prince of Wales (whom he refers to as "Himself") and dual pleasing pretence clocks that see similar to lumps of pristine crystal, divulgence their faces usually when you stagger them. He contingency have a smashing grandfather.

When he was sixteen and at Eton, Antony Armstrong-Jones engaged polio. It left him with a dry left leg an in. shorter than the right one. Is it loyal that his mother, the Countess of Rosse, never visited him in the Liverpool Royal Infirmary when he was bedbound for a year with polio as a teenager?

"My sister [Susan] did." That seems to be a yes.

What did he do all day? "I knitted. I knitted huge, prolonged scarves for my sister. I precious my sister… Like a potion of wine?"

In the march of his career, shabby as majority by Henri Cartier-Bresson as the exemplary portraitist Irving Penn, Snowdon photographed roughly any one of any significance in the conform and humanities universe as well as marketplace traders, butchers and East End beer hall life. He recalls a conform still he did for Vogue, of a indication station in between a raise of cars in a junk back yard in Queens, New York. Very outre for 1957. "I dont think you would be authorised to do that now," he says. "Health and reserve would get in the way."

He tells how he once photographed Rudolf Nureyev in his typical garments and asked him to remove the hankie from his trouser slot since it looked ridiculous. "Nureyev said: "That is no hankie… He was wonderful."

In 2008, Anne de Courcys biography, Snowdon, suggested him as an physical condition philanderer who had majority liaisons, prior to and after his matrimony in 1960 to Princess Margaret, a small of them overlapping, and dual producing children. Some of it was flattering unedifying reading. The matrimony passionate, flighty and in the future jointly mortal could not tarry the strife of dual �lite egos. In her acknowledgements, de Courcy voiced "great gratitude" to him for giving her hours of taped interviews and "full and unobstructed access" to his files and archives.

Her main end is that the dual great motivating forces in the hold up of the Queens gifted but unreformable brother-in-law were "work and sex".

What does he think of this? "Not with her, I hope," he says, quick-fire. "God forbid."

He seems softly discontented with the book. Why did he combine on the venture? "I dont know." Does he instruct he hadnt? "Probably, yes."

He lives stylishly but not grandly in a flattering Victorian residence in Kensington where he changed after his divorce from Princess Margaret. He is right away additionally divorced from his second wife, Lucy [formerly Lindsay-Hogg], though she stays piece of his life. They have a grown-up daughter, Frances. There is a house keeper and, 3 days a week, his PA, Lynne, whose purpose at the talk is to recollect the poignant dates and ages Lord Snowdon forgets and even to prompt him about how he felt about things.

"Two years ago, I went to Egypt. Whats it called? Sharm el-Sheikh." He turns to her. "I desired it, didnt I?"

Time and time again, he earnings to his love of what he calls "ordinary" photographs on themes such as old age and loneliness, though nothing of his work seems to fit the outline "ordinary". In the Seventies, The Sunday Times Magazine (of that he was once design editor) sent him on an choice to see at conditions in mental hospitals, afterwards well known as asylums. It was the commencement of his prolonged operative organisation with Marjorie Wallace, contributor incited mental health supporter and some-more not long ago his lover.

"I used to work a lot with and still do with Marjorie whats her surname?" Lynne reserve "Wallace". "We used to go to mental institutions at five or 6 in the sunrise when you usually had the night staff and you were some-more expected to get in. I dont think we would be authorised in now."

Once in, Wallace would confuse the staff, whilst Snowdon nipped in to the wards with his small Leica. They would afterwards be taken turn on an central tour. He constructed a small noted images together with a design of a dark-haired helper cradling and stuff oneself a hydrocephalic child. "I try to sketch with love and sympathy. I goal one gets a greeting of love in in between dual people. That"s really important."

Snowdon says it was his "wonderful uncle", Oliver Messel, the theatre designer, who taught him how to look. "I used to stay with him in Venice and we would travel all night. Most people see down. He taught me to see up. You miss so majority by not seeking up." When Snowdon took his dual children, Sarah [Chatto] and David [Lord Linley] to Venice, he practical the same rule. "I done them get up at five in the morning. Im not a really great photographer but I do get up progressing than most. Youre usually some-more expected to see things happening."

The phone goes and it is Sir Peter Blake, the cocktail artist, toll to instruct his crony a happy birthday. While they are talking, there is time to take in the accessories of Snowdons clearly unerring life: the on foot frame, the stick, the stairlift. He has never once referred to his condition, usually to his ardour for work. How are things? Blake contingency have asked him. "Im carrying fun," says Snowdon. "Having fun."