Career
After university, Armstrong-Jones began a career as a photographer in fashion, design and theatre. His stepmother had a friend who knew Baron the photographer; Baron visited Armstrong-Jones in his London flat, which doubled as his work studio. Baron, impressed, agreed to bring on Armstrong-Jones as an apprentice, first on a fee-paying basis but eventually, as his talent and skills became apparent to Baron, as a salaried associate.
Much of his early commissions were theatrical portraits, often with recommendations from his uncle Oliver Messel, and "society" portraits highly favoured in Tatler, which, in addition to buying many of his photographs, gave him byline credit for the captions. He later became known for his royal studies, among which were the official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh during their 1957 tour of Canada. He was also an early contributor to Queen magazine, the magazine owned by his friend Jocelyn Stevens.
After marrying Princess Margaret in May 1960, Armstrong-Jones's first solo public engagement was on 7 December 1960, when he presented the 1960 National Challenge Trophies for the trade organisation the Photographic Information Council's School Photography competition, with entries from 200 schools in Britain with camera clubs, at the opening of an exhibition of the work. News of this event was covered in American and Australian newspapers, as well as in England.
In line with the usual royal practice when a king's daughter married a commoner, in October 1961 Armstrong-Jones was granted a peerage, becoming Earl of Snowdon, or Lord Snowdon.
In the early 1960s, Snowdon became the artistic adviser of The Sunday Times Magazine, and by the 1970s had established himself as one of Britain's most respected photographers. Though his work included everything from fashion photography to documentary images of inner-city life and the mentally ill, he is best known for his portraits of world notables, many of them published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine, and The Sunday Telegraph Magazine. His subjects included Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Leslie Caron, Lynn Fontanne, David Bowie, Elizabeth Taylor, Rupert Everett, Anthony Blunt, David Hockney, Princess Grace of Monaco, Diana, Princess of Wales, Barbara Cartland, Raine Spencer (when she was Lady Lewisham), Desmond Guinness, British prime minister Harold Macmillan, Iris Murdoch, Tom Stoppard, Vladimir Nabokov, and J. R. R. Tolkien. More than 280 of his photographs are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery.
In 1968, he made his first documentary film, Don't Count the Candles, for the US television network CBS, on the subject of aging. It won seven awards, including two Emmys. This was followed by Love of a Kind (1969), about the British and animals, Born to Be Small (1971) about people of restricted growth and Happy Being Happy (1973).
In October 1981, a group portrait by Snowdon of the British rock band Queen was used on the cover of their Greatest Hits album. A Snowdon portrait of Freddie Mercury was used in 2000 on the cover of Mercury's compilation box set The Solo Collection.
In 2000, Snowdon was given a retrospective exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective, which travelled to the Yale Center for British Art the following year. More than 180 of his photographs were displayed in an exhibition that honoured what the museums called "a rounded career with sharp edges". The retrospective highlighted Snowdon’s work across portraiture, fashion, and documentary photography, including iconic images of cultural figures such as David Bowie and members of the British royal family.
Snowdon was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society—he was awarded the Hood Medal of the Society in 1978 and the Progress Medal in 1985.
In 2006, Tomas Maier, creative director of the Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta, brought in Snowdon to photograph his Autumn/Winter 2006 campaign.
