Patrick Lichfield inhabited a world of beauty, class and style that he documented with conspicuous success for more than 40 years, in the process creating some of the 20th century's most iconic images - such as the Princess of Wales in her fairytale dress bending down to comfort a bridesmaid; the Queen, at ease and unselfconscious, relaxing with her beloved dogs; Mick and Bianca Jagger laughing together after their rock-star wedding. With his uniquely sympathetic eye for faces, he photographed a range of personalities for Life, Queen and Vogue magazines from the mid-1960s onwards: stars of stage and screen, politicians, aristocracy and royalty, sportsmen and women, models and socialites, as well as ordinary men and women going about their daily lives. Although he came to be identified with photographs of the illustrious, Lichfield was also an acute observer of the world around him, and his lesser-known photojournalism as well as his portraits make up a fascinating picture of the period in which he lived and worked. Curated by Martin Harrison, Perceptions is filled with photographs from Lichfield's entire archive, over half of which have never been seen before.
This superbly produced retrospective, the first representing his complete career, establishes Patrick Lichfield as one of the great British photographers of the late 20th Century.