Terry O’Neill: legend photographer

Just to remember you dear readers, Terry O’Neill is one of the most famous “star photographers” of his generation. This English artist started his career as a steward for the airline company British airways before becoming a photographer. One day, as he was taking pictures in the airport, he pictured the home secretary of England without knowing him and was offered a job on Fleet Street and then on the daily sketch in 1959. This music lover wanted to become a musical photographer but then turned out to be more interested in movie stars, or at least, in “stars”. And this is what he became: a respected star photographer.

Terry O’Neil had his particular technique of working: he spent at least one week with the star he wanted to take a picture of in order to “capture” his sensibility, his personality. Terry wanted to know his “subject”, to know the person before the star and as a result, we can feel the relationship between the star and the photographer as the picture shows a real intimacy behind the lens. But Terry didn’t choose the people he wanted to work with, HE was chosen. Actors, actresses, singers, everybody wanted his picture with Terry O’Neill: Isabella Rossellini, Brigitte Bardot, Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen, Laurence Olivier, Paul Newman, the Beatles, David Bowie, Elton john, Elvis Presley (and I could keep going on but the list would be too long).

In black and white, the pictures are tragic and impressive but certainly peculiar. The only picture in colour is the one of Faye Dunaway (his ex-wife), the day after she won an Oscar for Network. For the “contemporary touch” the only portrait is Amy Whinehouse, nobody else because Terry O’Neill doesn’t work with current stars. He doesn’t see in them the same beauty and says “girls are not women anymore”. For him, everything is controlled; there are no more places for spontaneity.

But if Terry O’Neill is not a star photographer anymore, he is for sure a legend. And in such a beautiful place as the Hôtel de l’image, between a verdant garden and a charming gallery, people can look at the exhibition that remembers them a time not so far away, where stars were icons.

Clémence BORODINE