Godfrey Argent; portrait photographer
Hyfler/Rosner
15 June 2006
Roger Eldridge
Godfrey Argent
Definitive portrait photographer
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Godfrey Argent liked to describe himself as the last of the
traditional portrait photographers. In an age of mobile-
phone portraiture, his stylish black-and-white studies of
soldiers and statesmen, scientists and artists, aristocrats
and socialites can seem formal, even staged, but they remain
definitive.
The man behind the lens was anything but formal. He was the
archetypal "cheeky chappie", treating his sitters, who
ranged across the spectrum from the Queen and Margaret
Thatcher to Norman Wisdom and Joanna Lumley, with a mixture
of deference and irreverence. It was a tricky balancing act
that he had practised as a serving soldier, and it stood him
in good stead.
It worked on the late South African premier John Vorster.
Initially wary of the curly-haired "hippie" photographer
from London, the iron man of apartheid finally succumbed to
his charms, and the two disparate men ended up discussing
guns and big game. More significantly, Argent bagged his
shot.
On another occasion, to the consternation of courtiers, he
cheerfully advised a young Prince Charles to get married,
for his own good and the good of the nation. "On reflection,
not the best advice I've ever given," he said later.
Bernard Godfrey Argent (he dropped the first name in his
professional life, reckoning that Godfrey Argent sounded
grander) was born in Eastbourne in 1937. Educated at Bexhill
Grammar School, he served as a corporal of horse in the
Household Cavalry, and it was during his nine years in the
Army that he developed his love of portrait photography,
winning the British Army Photographic Competition and
becoming an Associate Member of the Royal Photographic
Society.
He attracted the attention of military grandees, notably the
Chief of the Imperial General Staff at the time, Field
Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, who commissioned Argent to
photograph him in full dress uniform. Impressed by the
results, Templer advised the tiro cameraman, "You are a much
better photographer than you will ever be a soldier. Don't
get to my age and then regret what you might have done."
Argent heeded the advice, though, with three young daughters
to support, he was taking a considerable gamble. Unlike his
famous contemporary Patrick Lichfield who, within two hours
of leaving the Grenadier Guards, had swapped uniform for
jeans and begun work in a photographer's studio, Argent
faced an unmapped future on civvy street.
He began his professional career in 1963 hefting a large
half-plate camera around the major seaside resorts of
southern England and Wales, capturing beach scenes for a
series of postcards. This earned him a commission to
photograph the Royal Mews for a new guidebook, and with it
an unexpected entrée to Palace circles. Almost immediately
he was offered a dream assignment: to photograph the Queen
with her horses.
With the writer Judith Campbell, he toured Windsor,
Sandringham and Balmoral, capturing the Queen and various
members of her family with their favourite mounts. The
resulting book, The Queen Rides (1965), is a forgotten gem,
providing a rare glimpse into a private realm. One
particular picture, of the young Queen, head bowed in
thought, next to her nuzzling horse, is a seminal study.
Argent's prowess with the camera attracted the attention of
Tom Blau, founder of the picture agency Camera Press, and he
was invited to join a stable which included Lords Snowdon
and Lichfield, Cecil Beaton, Karsh of Ottawa and, later,
Norman Parkinson.
Joining such a photographic élite presented occasional
stumbling blocks. Summoned to Kensington Palace by the Earl
of Snowdon to explain on whose authority he had photographed
his young son, Viscount Linley, Argent had the killer
answer: "Well, actually, the Queen." Suitably disarmed,
Snowdon proceeded to offer him a master class in portrait
photography.
For a while, the royal connection flourished, with
invitations to produce official portraits for the 15th
birthday of Princess Anne and the 18th birthday of Prince
Charles, both in 1966, then studies of Charles for a stamp
to mark his Investiture as Prince of Wales. Other
commissions followed for a succession of royal Christmas
cards. Then, in the early 1970s, the connection was cut.
"There was no explanation," said Argent. "It just stopped.
It's happened to others as well, sometimes because they
revealed too much. But I never did that. I was always
discreet."
However, his career began to flourish in other directions. A
businessman as well as a photographer, Argent bought the
archives of the portrait photographer Walter Bird, and later
of the celebrated society photographer Baron. At his London
studios, first in Queen's Gate then in Holland Street, he
became the grandest of high-street photographers,
photographing businessmen, soldiers in uniform, families and
children. "I did the good and the great," he said.
"Sometimes the not-so-good and not-so-great, who often paid
better."
In 1967 Argent was appointed official photographer for the
National Photographic Record, housed at the National
Portrait Gallery, with the mission of photographing "people
who are actively doing things and can be seen to be doing
things". His sitters included John Betjeman and Noël Coward,
Anna Neagle and John Gielgud, Alan Bennett and David
Attenborough. His work was recognised with a one-man show at
the National Portrait Gallery in 1972.
For over 20 years, until 1993, he was also official
photographer for the Royal Society, producing a series of
outstanding portraits of Britain's most distinguished
scientists, including Nobel Prize winners such as Sir Peter
Medawar, Francis Crick and Stephen Hawking.
He also worked in the theatre, and photographed the annually
changed cast of The Mousetrap 23 years times between 1967
and 1993, a record almost as impressive as the longevity of
the play itself.
In recent years, he turned increasingly to painting,
producing painstaking portraits in oils which were
intricately based on his own photographs.
As a photographer, Argent revered the late Yousuf Karsh,
arguably the greatest of all portrait photographers,
emulating his monumental style and peerless lighting; but he
also added a freshness of his own. The sheer range and depth
of his work were on display at his final exhibition, a
one-man show at the Special Photographers Gallery in London
last year. It was a fitting epitaph to his career.
Bernard Godfrey Argent, photographer: born Eastbourne,
Sussex 6 February 1937; married 1956 Janet Boniface (died
1970; three daughters), second Anne Coxon (marriage
dissolved 1973), third 1973 Sally McAlpine (one daughter;
marriage dissolved 1990); died London 1 June 2006.