Cameraman with a roving eye for beautiful women

Press, 16 August 1984, Page 21

Cameraman with a roving eye for beautiful women

By

KEN COATES

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and for Patrick Lichfield it is also very much through the lens of his camera.

Beauty for the famous peer-turned-photographer, who has run his discerning eye over more than a million beautiful women all over the world, is not a quality he can automatically reproduce on a glossy print, however beautiful the lady.

He is a thoughtful chap, is Thomas Patrick John Anson, fifth

Earl of Lichfield, sixth Viscount Anson, sixth Baron Soberton, a cousin of the Queen.

Beauty in women defies a neat, precise definition, he says. This in spite of his book, “The Most Beautiful Women,” and his well-known Unipart calendar girls. But, naturally, the professional Cicture-snapping lord knows what e wants, and therefore the kind of beauty in a woman which photographs best.

The classic profile, with the elongated, aquiline sort of PreRaphaelite face, is much more difficult to photograph than the Britt Eklands of this world — the blue-eyed, blonde Scandinavian types with turned up nose, he said.

Britt is said to have brightened his bachelor days, and she is included in his book, with the description: “Swedish actress, internationally famous not least for her marriage to Peter Sellers and

her associations with other leading international names.”

He also adds, presumably referring to her mention of their past romantic attachment in her memoirs: “She has lately enjoyed additional success as a writer of fiction.”

Does Lichfield try to capture an image, or get a response? “I don’t really think about it too hard in advance,” he says. If a girl is worth photographing for something like his beautiful women book, he asks her to come to his London studio where he has a good look at her in the selection of clothes she is asked to bring. Then he chooses a particular technique for the girl’s particular looks. “I might decide she has to be in black and white, because I know she will look better, and it can be a nice change. I play a' lot by ear.” A woman might look terrific in the street, say, but rather different through a camera. And the converse: “Some women I have seen on TV or in films I

have found quite disappointing when they walked into my studio, until looked at them through a camera.”

People are photogenic or not — of some no-one could take a good photograph, says Lichfield. “When you go to a party in Hollywood, you see these stars who are not only extremely small, but they don’t look nearly as good as they do on the screen. That’s the lens for you.” Lord Lichfield is always on the look-out for lovely ladies, professionally speaking that is. But finding women who are not already on the covers of the fashion magazines is not easy, he adds. “Any beautiful woman walking down the street is extremely likely, sooner or later, to find her way into some modelling assignment or other.”

He wanted to include some “completely unknowns” in his beautiful women book, along with the actress beauties and the elegant socialites who, naturally in-

clude, the Countess Lichfield.

By a fluke, a girl who turned up at his studio as a hairdresser to fix the hair of one of the glamorous film stars was stunning.

“I told her to stay behind after the session, when I had got rid of the celebrity. She was surprised and extremely shy, but she is one of the better looking ones in the book.

“I expected her to launch herself into a great modelling career, but she has gone back to hairdressing, which I find refreshing.” Women’s looks have changed with the shifting of sexual focus. As Lichfield puts it, a woman who might have seemed incredibly beautiful in the 1960 s might not currently appear so because the look may be dated. How would he describe today’s beautiful look? He does not attempt to, revealing instead a flash of cynicism about the whole fashion frame-up of women. “You’ve got to take into account what all the manipulators of women are doing to them — the fashion designers, the hairdressers, the make-up people.

“They’re the ones who change the way women look. You can’t alter the basic bone structure, I suppose, though quite a lot of people alter the skin that covers it”

Seriously, he observes: “I think a really beautiful woman shines through the contemporary manipulations. Whatever the era, if she is that beautiful, she is going to make people sit up and look.” Lord Lichfield freely admits his book is about skin-deep beauty. “Beauty that goes beyond that has to do with personality and I am not photographing personalities.” Some photographers, he says, like to sit down and talk for three hours or so with a woman and work out what she is like. But he thinks this pretentious. “What you’re trying to do is to get a picture which will please you and please them.” Most of the females he photographs do not need putting at ease because they are confident about their looks.

Lichfield himself confesses he gets nervous before taking his pictures, as do some personages who come to his studio for portraits. “If they are very nervous, I give them a strong drink.” While he says he travels too much, the lively lord, who is heir to 9000 acres of English countryside, talks with a certain restrained relish about a job he has just completed for Cathay Pacific. This meant producing pictures for advertising and calendar use. It also meant travelling to all the airline’s destinations which kept him jetting around the world for 11 weeks, photographing the lovelies of the eight nationalities who make up the stewardesses. The practised eye of the discerning earl quickly decided Thai girls were the most beautiful of the Orientals. As to how he arrived at this judgment, Lord Lichfield shrugs, saying it is a gut reaction, adding that Thai girls have a natural elegance and bearing. Usually on the trip, he telephoned ahead so that a couple of models would be ready, but it was

unnecessary in Thailand. “Every girl in the hotel, even the one who brought the coffee, was quite as good as any girl we had used anywhere — marvellous." What of those scantily-clad Unipart calendar girls which have landed the Queen’s cousin in hot water during the six years he has been snapping them? Patrick Lichfield, the professional photographer, has been at it again on the island of Bali, working seriously on the next calendar, “which will be a complete departure from anything I’ve done before.”

He would not discuss it in detail, but he claims to have taken the girlie calendar, which originated in Britain’s automotive industry, rather more upmarket — given it a bit of class, so to speak. For years, he says, the calendars were “extremely tacky, boring, and bad — the sort of really cheap shots the popular Sunday papers run."

He agreed to take shots for one of the calendars, but only on his terms, “which were that I make it much more strongly pictorial in content, and much less naked flesh. “It is only fair that attacks of sexism should be made as I am very anti-girlie-magazines and that kind of explicit photography. It is also intensely boring. “For a calendar, you try to produce a shot which you or someone else can live with for a month. Imagine trying to live with a ‘Playboy* spread stuck on the wall for 30 days. “So you go for something stylish, scenic, and classy; not something that palls and becomes boring after the 21st day.” While on the subject, had the world-ranging photographer anything to say about New Zealand women?

He looked a trifle disappointed as he explained that on this trip, his first to New Zealand, he had spent his time inside hotel rooms and with photographers in photographic conferences, and had seen only five women walking down the street.

Perhaps on his next visit