Cecil Beaton, elegance and war
« British photographer and set designer (1904-1980), royal portraitist and war reporter. »
Cecil Beaton joined Vogue in 1928. A society portraitist — Greta Garbo, the Mitfords, Wallis Simpson, Elizabeth II — he mastered a theatrical style of painted backdrops, drapery, hard light. His career as official royal photographer ran from Wallis Simpson to the 1953 coronation portraits.
During WWII, the Ministry of Information sent him to photograph Blitz-era England, then the Sahara, India, Burma. The photograph of Eileen Dunne (1940), a three-year-old girl in a London hospital after a raid, swung American opinion in favour of supporting the British.
Set designer for Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964) — two Oscars — Beaton fused portrait, fashion and stage into one universe. His diaries, published in volumes, remain a sharp chronicle of the 20th century. Knighted in 1972, he died in Wiltshire in 1980.