"I thought I'd photographed everyone, all the great names that populated our lives and our post-war history. There was no-one left I wanted to photograph – and then I met Mandela and it took me back, all the way back, to that street in 1962 when Winston gave me a wave."
It is surprising that it took 50 years before O'Neill himself realized the extent of his legacy when it was obvious to all who had followed his career. Photographers always looked to the next assignment, the next shoot, tomorrow paid the rent, tomorrow's subject was how you were judged, yesterday's photographs were quickly consigned to filing cabinets and cardboard boxes in dusty cellars.
Hardly a box or a file could be opened without revealing the intriguing, the compelling, the mesmerizing. O'Neil l's photographs told stories, historical insights into a cultural heritage long forgotten, or mislaid.
How did he do it? How did O'Neill conjure an uncharacteristic guffaw from HM The Queen, or persuade Margaret Thatcher to soften her image and delicately hold a flower under her chin, or persuade the controlling and difficult Frank Sinatra to allow him to photograph him in private and in public without EVER ordering him to put his camera away? Why would he, or Elton John or David Bowie or countless others feel so comfortable working with O'Neill that his archive can cover decades of their lives and careers?
The secret to O'Neill's access was simple – it wasn't just modesty and charm that unlocked doors, but a deliberate policy of making himself invisible once inside; he was a ghost in their presence when so many others invaded the limelight of stars. He was THERE. In the right place at the right time, camera loaded, as he says himself, taking pictures in his head that the camera translated – pictures that were honest, intimate, insightful, historic.
And even now, 10 years after the first ground was broken, digging into those boxes, a rich seam of images still remains to be mined, a vein of silver gelatin so deep it just keeps on throwing up nuggets.
At book signings and in gallery openings, O'Neill will sign or say simply "Enjoy."
There's nothing more to say.
Purchase "Terry O'Neill Rare and Unseen" here.
Truncated foreword by Robin Morgan, co-founder and CEO of iconic images.
Diana Ross
Terry O'Neill
Original press print, 1972.
Carrie Fisher
Terry O'NeillJulie Andrews
Terry O'Neill
On the set of the film "Star!" in the South of France, 1968.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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