Remembering Snowdon

Lord Snowdon, the photographer and former husband of the Queen's sister Princess Margaret, passed away peacefully last week aged 86.

Formerly Tony Armstrong Jones before his marriage in 1960 to Princess Margaret, Snowdon started taking photographs as a professional in 1951. In 1956 he took his first photograph for British Vogue, where he remained a contributing photographer for 60 years.

Genesis is honoured that Lord Snowdon was among the 100 contributors to the limited edition, VOGUE - VOICE OF A CENTURY, in which several of his photographs are featured.

His subjects for Vogue included a hugely diverse range of figures from across the decades, from designers, writers, actors and artists to politicians, campaigners and social commentators. His portraits featured in VOGUE - VOICE OF A CENTURY include Lady Diana Spencer, Bridget Riley, Mia Farrow and David Bowie.

Former Vogue picture editor Robin Muir remembers in VOGUE - VOICE OF A CENTURY, "When we were commissioning Snowdon, he absolutely forbade us to tell the sitter who the photographer was going to be. He was quite aware of what the name Lord Snowdon meant to people and he didn't want them to get into the wrong frame of mind before a shoot."

Snowdon's photographic career not only included society photography and portraiture but also fashion, where his spontaneous style was viewed as ground breaking when he began in the late Fifties. Former Vogue fashion editor, Helen Robinson comments in VOGUE - VOICE OF A CENTURY: "Until then poses were quite formal, quite stuffy. But Tony threw all that out. He showed people doing things in real life, not perfectly posed in some stately room but laughing, living, in restaurants, in the country etc. He let a lot of air in."

Left: David Bowie photographed by Snowdon for the September 1978 issue of British Vogue, from VOGUE - VOICE OF A CENTURY