Perceptions

The name of Patrick Lichfield, photographer, is indelibly associated with a world of beauty and style that he inhabited with conspicuous success for more than 40 years. From the time of his first commissions 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, aristocracy and royalty, 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 cousin of The Queen, Lichfield had entrée to a world unknown to many. His intimate photographs of the Royal Family and their circle afforded a glimpse into an inaccessible world. His 1970s photographs of the British manufacturing industries are historic as many no longer exist today. His editorial and advertising work included fashion, motor, tobacco, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and airline campaigns. From 1978, for 17 years, he created the prestigious Unipart calendar, shot in a number of exotic locations worldwide. He also worked long term for Burberry, Olympus Cameras, the British Tourist Authority and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.
Curated by Martin Harrison and divided into sections on Memory, Land, Empires, Cultures and Styles, Perceptions is filled with photographs from Lichfield s entire archive, from the 1960s to 2005, 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.