WIN A COPY OF THE CROWN IN FOCUS – TWO CENTURIES OF ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Royal watchers will just love this captivating new book featuring 200 royal photographs from the mid-19th century to the present day. From instantly recognisable formal portraits, to rarely seen images from private collections, The Crown in Focus explores the Royal Family’s relationship with photography and how photography has shaped the monarchy’s public image.
Before the advent of photography, the images of Royalty purveyed throughout the world were static, formal likenesses proclaiming power and prestige but with little, if any, sense of intimacy. As historian Professor Sir David Cannadine explains in his foreword to The Crown in Focus, this resulted in ‘a chasm of distance … that was not easily bridged.’
Photography created an unprecedented opportunity to connect sovereigns and subjects, and Prince Albert was among the first of European Royalty to understand its potential in the face of a growing tide of republicanism overseas. Each subsequent generation of the Royal Family has acknowledged the power of photography and its role in the survival and popularity of the monarchy.
Written by Claudia Acott Williams, an expert curator from Historic Royal Palaces and arranged into thematic chapters covering subjects including The Dawn of Photography, A New Elizabethan Age and Monarchy and the Media, this fascinating book reveals how each development of the medium – from the daguerreotype to Instagram – has been embraced to record Royal life. It also considers the art of Royal photography through the monarchy’s patronage of leading 20th century photographers such as Cecil Beaton and family member Patrick Lichfield, as well as contemporary photographers including Chris Jackson.
Members of the Royal Family have often been keen photographers themselves, and The Crown in Focus includes pictures from their own albums. It looks, too, at the publication of photographs by the Royals, from Queen Alexandra to the Duchess of Cambridge, where the personal view has become the public image.
The Crown in Focus is published by Merrell at £29.95, and we have five copies to give away to lucky Royal Life readers.
All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning one is to answer this very simple question:
Who was Princess Diana’s favourite photographer?
A: Mario Testino
B: Lord Snowdon
C: Patrick Lichfield
Please fill out the form below to enter the competition:
Alternatively please send your answer to us via email at info@royallife.co.uk or by post to the editorial address:
Legacy Magazines Ltd
Unit 4, Faraday Close
Oakwood Industrial Estate
Clacton on Sea, Essex
CO15 4TR, UK
Remember to include your name, address, email and contact number. The competition deadline is 31st January 2021. The winner will be selected at random and revealed in issue 50, and on the Royal Life Facebook page.
