His work

A portrait artist with a unique and unmistakable style, a 35 mm camera and an unprecedented approach to his photographed subjects, Terry O’Neill has immortalised the great film legends of the last sixty years, the most famous pop and rock groups that dominated the music scene of the 1960s and 1970s, to the most famous faces of 20th century cinema, politics and sport and many leading figures from the world of fashion.

Terry O’Neill’s photographic career began by chance. ‘I was a jazz percussionist and wanted to go to America. In order to move to the US as a musician, I joined the photography department of British Airways,’ he recalls. ‘I had to photograph people at the entrance of the London airport and capture the emotions of the various encounters.’ Hence his fortune. O’Neill photographed a man in a suit and tie asleep amidst a group of Africans in tribal dress. The man portrayed turned out to be British Foreign Secretary Rab Butler. The image was bought by newspapers, marking a decisive turning point in his career and making him ‘the guy with the 35 mm Leica’.

O’Neill was the first to portray pop and rock stars; his are, for example, the first photographs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the shots that helped launch various artistic careers, such as that of Elton John and David Bowie.

Other stars of Terry O’Neill’s photos were the great actors of the 1970s and 1980s, one of Hollywood’s golden eras. Stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Liz Taylor, Raquel Welch, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Groucho Marx, Ava Gardner, Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway were part of the photographer’s usual circle of acquaintances.

However, the most photographed character during O’Neill’s artistic parabola was the singer Frank Sinatra, whose personal photographer he was for 30 years.

Politicians of the calibre of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were also immortalised by his lens.

Since the 1990s, O’Neill has only accepted special assignments, such as the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of England or the photo shoots for Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, Pelé and for the James Bond saga.