Groundbreaking portraits of the stars that transformed the 20th century

After get­ting his start in 1960 at The Dai­ly Sketch, British pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ter­ry O’Neill (1938 – 2019) took his right­ful place at the fore­front of a rev­o­lu­tion in music, fash­ion and pop cul­ture sweep­ing the UK. As the Swing­ing Six­ties took the nation by storm, O’Neill cap­tured it all with his sig­na­ture blend of glam­our, style and charm.

Over the next six decades, O’Neill would amass an incom­pa­ra­ble archive filled with artists and stars that trans­formed the 20^th cen­tu­ry into a gold­en age of inno­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty. To hon­our his lega­cy, Fotografiska New York presents Ter­ry O”Neill: Stars, the late artist’s largest US exhi­bi­tion. The show brings togeth­er 110 clas­sic and less­er-known works that cap­ture the glit­ter of Hol­ly­wood and the grit of the music industry.

“I think what made O’Neill an extra­or­di­nary por­traitist was his extreme­ly hum­ble approach to pho­tog­ra­phy, even after he was grant­ed access to all the major stars,” says Phoebe Wein­stein, Exhi­bi­tions Man­ag­er at Fotografiska New York. ​“It might come as quite a sur­prise to most peo­ple to learn that Ter­ry nev­er aspired to be a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and that he almost stum­bled into it.”

O’Neill may not have achieved his youth­ful dream of becom­ing a jazz drum­mer, but he nev­er lost the inim­itable sense of tim­ing and rhythm that the best pho­tog­ra­phers pos­sess in spades. He cul­ti­vat­ed rela­tion­ships root­ed in trust, dig­ni­ty and respect, recog­nis­ing the innate human­i­ty of peo­ple who were some­times regard­ed as com­modi­ties by their respec­tive industries.

“The world of Hol­ly­wood stars, leg­endary ath­letes and super­mod­els nev­er got to Ter­ry,” says Wein­stein. ​“He saw and treat­ed the stars like every­one else, and I believe that is why he was also to cap­ture such authen­tic and hon­est images of these oth­er­wise rather unat­tain­able peo­ple. He was a peo­ple per­son that under­stood the pow­er that he held with a cam­era in his hands, and he respect­ed that power.”

Whether pho­tograph­ing Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor gen­tly plac­ing a cig­a­rette between David Bowie’s lips, or shoot­ing Faye Dun­away in a satin robe and stilet­to heels gaz­ing enig­mat­i­cal­ly at the 1977 Acad­e­my Award she won the pre­vi­ous evening for her role in Net­work, O’Neill cap­tured moments of ten­der­ness and inti­ma­cy with the same aplomb he brought to fash­ion shoots with Nao­mi Camp­bell and Kate Moss dur­ing the height of the 1990s super­mod­el era.

“Most of the pho­tographs of Hol­ly­wood stars in the exhi­bi­tion were tak­en behind the scenes or out­side of the con­trolled stu­dio set­ting,” says Wein­stein. ​“This allowed O’Neill to cap­ture them with their guards down, cou­pled with the fact that he had such a pas­sion for music and films, which meant that these weren’t just assign­ments to him, he gen­uine­ly cared for the tal­ent that he worked with.”

O’Neill’s icon­ic por­trait of Brigitte Bar­dot on a 1971 movie set came from a pro­found sense of love, which he chan­neled into the cre­ation of the pho­to­graph. ​“I had no idea if the pho­to would match the image I had in my mind until the film was devel­oped, which, in the end, took sev­er­al weeks,” O’Neill once said. ​“Even now, remem­ber­ing the first time I saw these images, I get chills.”

Ter­ry O’Neill: Stars on view through Sep­tem­ber 16, 2023 at Fotografiska New York.

Fol­low Miss Rosen on Twit­ter.

Enjoyed this arti­cle? Fol­low Huck on Twit­ter and Insta­gram.