Terry O'Neills Show @ Chris Beetles

To Terry O’Neill’s show at the Chris Beetles Gallery, called 50 Years At The Top. A bubbly, enthusiastic man, he said that he was very lucky – lucky to have been working in the 60s and 70s, ‘when it was all happening’, lucky to be able to use 35mm, when no one else was in Hollywood, lucky that it was before the days of PRs having total control over celebrities. Today, he says, there is no-one around today he particularly wants to photograph and no great magazines like Life or Paris Match to publish them. He said that with photography, composition is all, followed by light.
‘But composition is key. For instance in a portrait of Terry Stamp with his then girlfriend, Jean Shrimpton, I thought their faces represented the 60s, so I wanted to take a portrait to sum this up. I wanted a really strong portrait. That’s what I mean about composition, you have to have the bravery to say what you want to say and put it on film. You can’t teach that.’
‘Some of my best shots I caught with just one frame, perhaps two. You just shoot and it wasn’t until you got them developed you see what you have got, whether you have caught the moment.’

Mainly using black and white film, O’Neill’s photographs are brilliantly composed, sometimes breaking the 2/3rds rules (as with his shot of Twiggy), sometimes posed (Raquel Welsh on the cross) or capturing a quick moment in time (Bardot with cigar), which he took on the last frame he had in his camera. O’Neill evidently acts very quickly and instinctively to catch the moment and his instinct tells him when the composition and light is right. They are all very powerful photographs, showing the settings and personality of the subjects. The end results are always more than the sum of their parts.

photo from : DRAMA! Legendary photographer,
Terry O'Neill, makes off with our Irving Penn!. -

Terry O'Neill
Jean Shrimpton & Terrence Stamp, London , 1963
20x24 inch paper
silver gelatin print