New Lord Lichfield celebrity exhibition

New Lord Lichfield celebrity exhibition NEWS

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A new exhibition of Patrick Lichfield's photographic portraits unveils a fabulous collection of previously unseen celebrity photographs.

A wonderful new exhibition of celebrity photographs taken by Lord Patrick Lichfield, cousin to the Queen, opens in December.

The exhibition, called Perceptions, which features many portraits of the rich and famous, will feature at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London and is sure to attract a significant number of viewers and potential purchasers for the 34 previously unseen photographs will be on sale for between £1,000 and £1,800 each.

Amongst the luminaries included in the exhibition photographs are actress Elizabeth Taylor, her husband and actor Richard Burton, fashion designer Yves Saint Lauren and Hollywood icon Marlon Brando.

Although Taylor was regarded as Hollywood royalty during her career Lichfield managed to capture Taylor reacting to the real thing in a picture taken in 1968 when the actress, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth, was caught discreetly getting out her camera in order to snap the monarch. Taylor can be seen wearing the 33-carat £2m diamond ring given to her by husband Burton.

The picture was taken at a society wedding and is just one of what promises to be a number of photographs that will enthral viewers of the exhibition. As a member of the aristocracy Lichfield had unparalleled access to movie stars, musicians and society figures, such as Taylor and Burton who he photographed on holiday aboard a yacht in the South of France.

Many of Lichfield's portraits can be regarded as chronicles of the Swinging Sixties with photos of Marlon Brando in London in 1967, Yul Brynner also in London in 1968, Dirk Bogarde on the set of his 1968 film Justine and fashion legend Yves Saint Lauren in his Marrakesh home in 1969. There is also a peep into his private life with a photograph of actress Britt Ekland, a one-time girlfriend, taken at Lichfield's ancestral home of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire.

The Perceptions exhibition also features some more obscure subjects such as a Gurkha standing guard in the snow outside St. James' Palace in 1982.

Lichfield, who died in 2005, had more than a million negatives in his archive and it has taken the collaboration of his former assistant, Iain Lewis, to put the exhibition together.

When discussing the importance of the collection that is to be exhibited in Perceptions, Lewis said 'Trawling through them all and coming across so many new images of iconic faces is like finding little pieces of unknown history'.