Two weeks after the wedding, she gave birth to a girl. It wasn’t from his wife, but from one of his best friends who he had had a threesome with her husband a few months ago. He was named godfather, and a thick veil hung over this illegitimate daughter, over all his previous bisexual relationships and all future ones, because at that moment he ceased to be Anthony Armstrong and became Lord Snowdon. Elizabeth II’s new son-in-law, married to Princess Margaret, has always lived as a place to go, but never as a place to live. He devoted most of his time to photography and became one of the most sought after photographers in the United Kingdom. Today, and partly thanks to CrownWe only know him with the princess’s bisexual husband, but he is the creator of many images that already belong to our collective imagination.

Their story, the story of both of them, is one of the strengths of the show’s second season. but it focuses almost exclusively on his most extravagant side as a member of the British royal family. But Lord Snowdon had a much stronger side, and he never thought of giving up his career for royal parties and official trips. He continued to work after his wedding in 1960, taking portraits that were so much his own that they led him to Salvador Dali, David Bowie, Tolkien, Serge Gainsbourg and Martin Amis, and being the creator of one of the two most striking photographs of Marguerite, the one the one she did on the occasion of her 29th birthday, in which she appears completely naked, and the one that took her already married in the bathtub with only a tiara on her head.

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He entered the world of cinema when he had already become an artistic consultant for the magazine. Sunday Times, and everything went just as well. In 1968 he presented his first documentary. Don’t count the candles, with which he won an Emmy. Moreover, although photographs of famous people published in media such as Fashion or Vanity Fairhe was obsessed with telling the story of life in his city and even did extensive work on portraits of mentally ill people, leaving the sister of the Queen of England increasingly lonely.

Anthony Armstrong Jones, also known as Lord Snowdon, is pictured talking to his then wife, Princess Margaret (1930-2002), at a formal event. ® Mary Evans / Illustrated London News Ltd / Agefotostock

The thing is that his passion for photography came from afar and his admiration for the monarchy had to be nurtured little by little. Armstrong lived a lonely childhood, with separated parents, half-siblings, comings and goings, and polio that left him semi-lame for life. He had a special character and, as his biography written by the journalist and writer Anne de Courcy tells us, a morality that has little to do with his time. He found his best face in the cell, and in Princess Margaret the hiding place his mother had always asked for, he was the first commoner to marry into royalty in 450 years, two titles of nobility (Earl of Snowdon and Viscount Linley of Nyman). and the right relationships that will open doors for your work.

His marriage lasted longer than expected, almost 18 years, and its end saved him from social exile. Because although he had been living apart from his home for many years and had even filled out spreadsheets with notes on what he hated most about his wife, the fact that she had fallen in love with a gardener and the press had photographed them on the island of Mustique gave him courage ask for a divorce and maintain good relations with the British monarchy.

He remained one of her main photographers, retained the title of Lord Snowdon even after marrying his second lover Lucy Mary Lindsay-Hogg, and continued to photograph the great people of the day. In the 1980s, Sam Mendes, John le Carré, artist Patrick Proctor and Iris Murdoch posed behind her camera without Marguerite, all of whom are now part of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.

He even had a very close relationship with Diana of Wales. He was tasked with taking their engagement photos, perhaps one of the few in which both Carlos and she are smiling. Including after divorce. Lord Snowdon and Lady Di remained very close and he is the last person to portray her “officially”. A few weeks before the princess’s death, on August 31, 1997, he took a series of photographs of her wearing various dresses, which were auctioned on June 25, including one known as the “revenge dress”, which, after raising more than £3 million, turned these images are a relic.

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At that time his influence was already total, and his photographs were part of the British imagination. For this reason, in 2000, the National Portrait Gallery presented a retrospective of all his work. The nearly 200 images were later exhibited at the Yale Center for British Art and are now part of the institution’s collection because they represent “a round career with very sharp edges.”

He died a few years later in 2017, still Lord Snowdon, having assumed fatherhood of that first daughter, his last marriage having been dissolved by another girl born out of wedlock, and having already received almost as much recognition for his work. and for your rich sex life.