PHOTOGRAPHY: Patrick Lichfield’s Caribbean Retrospective

Gus Franklyn-Bute

Updated December 2021

Patrick Lichfield’s Caribbean Retrospective

Patrick Lichfield (1939 – 2005) was an internationally renowned photographer who worked for all the major international magazines. He began his career as a photographer’s assistant after leaving the British Army. The son of Viscount Anson and Princess Anne of Denmark, the 5th Earl of Lichfield, and cousin to the Queen, Lichfield began to make a name for himself by snapping his celebrity and high society friends, even Mick and Bianca Jagger on their wedding day.

Patrick Lichfield’s major career break came when he was summoned by Diana Vreeland, the doyenne of fashion editors, to photograph the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, while they were in exile. This assignment led to a five-year contract with American Vogue. In 1981 Lichfield was appointed official photographer at the wedding of his cousin, The Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer.  One of his most iconic images was of African-American singer and novelist Marsha Hunt, nude and replete in her beautifully coiffured afro for her part as ‘Dionne’ in the rock musical ‘Hair’.

Patrick Lichfield’s photographs were exhibited around the world, and he published several books during his glittering career. The British National Portrait Gallery dedicated a retrospective exhibition to the first twenty years of his work in 2002.

 

Patrick Lichfield’s Legacy

In 2013, The Little Black Gallery presented Patrick Lichfield’s Caribbean exhibition in collaboration with The Estate of Patrick Lichfield to continue to promote his photographs and legacy. The exhibition was the first of Lichfield’s Caribbean images, many unpublished, representing all genres of Lichfield’s photography: landscape, portraiture, fashion, and nudes. The exhibition followed the internationally acclaimed exhibition Patrick Lichfield: Nudes at The Little Black Gallery in 2012.

Patrick Lichfield’s Caribbean 2013 retrospective was poignant, as just like the late Princess Margaret, he established a home in the stunning Caribbean island of Mustique in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Mustique has is a well-established escape of the rich and famous, where Lichfield first visited in the mid-1960s. He spent a considerable amount of time travelling the Caribbean where the archipelago provided the backdrop for many commissions. For example,  Cuba was the unprecedented location for the 1994 Unipart Calendar.

In a 2005 article by The Guardian newspaper, said of Patrick Lichfield he is ‘no technophobe,  enthusiastically espousing digital photography. His technical proficiency and industriousness, if not innovation or originality, earned him recognition in the trade. He was made a fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photographers and a member of the Royal Photographic Society.’