The name of Patrick Lichfield (1939-2005), photographer, is indelibly associated with the world of glamour and chic that he inhabited with conspicuous success for more than forty years. From the time of his first sessions for Life, Queen and Vogue magazines in the mid-1960s he was chiefly identified as a documenter of this lustrous milieu. Throughout his career he photographed personalities from all walks of life: stars of stage and screen, politicians, aristocrats and royals, sportsmen and women, models and socialites as well as ordinary men and women going about their daily business. He was an acute observer of the world around him and of the period in which he lived and worked.

As Earl of Lichfield and the Queen’s cousin, Lichfield had entrée to a world inaccessible to many. His intimate photographs of the royal family and their circle afford an insider’s glimpse into a dying world as do his 1970s photographs of the British at work, mainly in the manufacturing industries which no longer exist today. His advertorial work included fashion, cars, tobacco, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, airline campaigns, in particular Burberry’s and Olympus cameras, whose equipment he used. From 1978, for seventeen years, he created the prestigious Unipart calendar, shot in a number of exotic locations worldwide and in 1981 he was the official photographer at the wedding of The Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. 

Curated by Martin Harrison and divided into sections on Memory, Land, Empires, Cultures and Styles, Perceptions is packed with photographs from Lichfield’s entire career 1960s to 2005, over half of which have never been seen before. This superbly produced retrospective positions Patrick Lichfield confidently as one of the great British photographers of the late 20th century.

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