Picture This
See ravishing, rare images of Debbie, Jimi and more in Terence Donovan: One Hundred Faces.
ON AUGUST 25, 1967, photographer Terence Donovan went to Upper Berkeley Street, London W1, to take portraits of Jimi Hendrix for The Observer’s colour supplement. The accompanying inter view detailed Hendrix’s recent guitararson at Monterey Pop, and added “the Daughters of the American Revolution complained that he was too sexy.”
It was a less frantic Hendrix captured that day by Stepney-born Donovan, who, with David Bailey and Brian Duffy, made up the so-called ‘Black Trinity’ of snappers exemplifying working-class attitude and dash in the 1960s and beyond. “Compare the calmness of that image against Jimi Hendrix’s actual behaviour and life and all the things that were going on around him,” says Donovan’s widow Diana, who’s discussing the new book Terence Donovan: One Hundred Faces. “It would be interesting to be able to ask Terry how on earth he managed to create that calm.”
Donovan took his own life in 1996, and the book shows what he created in the realm of celebrity and music from the 1960s until that point. Joining notables including Sophia Loren, Kenneth Williams and Yasser Arafat, there are images of Debbie Harry, Roland Kirk, Marianne Faithfull, Bryan Ferry, Pet Shop Boys, Elvis Costello and Mark E Smith, plus the House Of God techno night at Birmingham’s Que Club, where Donovan’s son Terry was DJing. Work on the book began, with graphic designer David Hillman, after the publication of ’21’s Terence Donovan: 100 Fashion Photos. The idea, Diana continues, was for “a small format book of his work, something that would appeal to a younger audience, that wouldn’t cost a lot.”
The portraits capture choice moments between photographer and subject, but
Diana is cautious about tr ying to explain how her husband, a black belt in judo, did what he did. “I wasn’t involved in his work at all, and I honestly don’t think he would have enjoyed that for one minute,” she says. “But he would bring all the contacts home and we would look through them together. He had a ver y, ver y clear view of which image was going to work for the actual job that he was commissioned to do. Nothing to do with his photography was random. Every subject, anybody who came in front of his lens, was an individual person and needed to be treated differently. He wanted them to not relax too much, because he wanted them to concentrate a bit – it was very, very precise. He was completely dedicated to his craft, and you know, he got to the soul of people.”
Would Terence have approved of the book? “It’s ver y hard to say what other people will think, especially somebody like Terence. He would have had to think about it a bit, but yes, I think he probably would.”
Terence Donovan: One Hundred Faces is published by OH Editions on April 27.
“He got to the soul of people.” DIANA DONOVAN