Photographers

John Swannell was born in 1946. After leaving school at 16, he worked first as an assistant at Vogue Studios and then assisted David Bailey for four years before setting up his own studio. He spent the next ten years travelling and working for magazines such as Vogue, Harpers & Queen, the Sunday Times Magazineand Tatler. During this time, he developed his very distinctive, individual style in both fashion and beauty photography. Various exhibitions of his work in London and Europe confirmed his growing reputation as a photographer. In 1989, John Swannell had a one-man show at the Royal Academy in Edinburgh, followed in 1990 by an exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. In July of the same year, the Royal Photographic Society held a retrospective of his fashion work. In November 1994, Diana, Princess of Wales personally commissioned John to photograph her together with her sons. From November 1996 to March 1997, John had a one-man show of his portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London to celebrate the publication of his book, Twenty Years On. Those portraits are now held in their archives. John photographed HRH The Princess Royal for her fortieth and fiftieth birthdays. The Royal Mail commissioned him to photograph the Duke and Duchess of Wessex for a stamp celebrating their wedding and for the celebration stamp marking the occasion of HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother's 100th birthday in 2001. In 2002, John was one of the photographers asked to photograph HM The Queen to celebrate her Golden Jubilee. The images were used in the press and were displayed at Windsor Castle and the NPG. An exhibition sponsored by Olympus to launch his book, I'm Still Standing, was held at the Lowe Group in November 2002. The images were later shown at Dimbola Lodge,the home of Julia Margaret Cameron. The National Portrait Gallery in London has over 50 of his photographs, and the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Royal Photographic Society now hold many of John's works in their permanent collections. John has published three monographs: Fine Lines(1982), Naked Landscape(1986) and Twenty Years On (1996). His work was included in Ten Out Of Ten(2001), a collection of selected British photographers, all the proceeds of which went to the NSPCC. I'm Still Standing, a book of celebrity portraits, was published in 2002, with all profits made by John going to help autistic children.