Antony Armstrong-Jones (1930-2017) was a British photographer and filmmaker famous for portraying personalities such as David Bowie, Elizabeth Taylor, and Princess Diana. He became known as Lord Snowdon after his marriage to Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II of England.
In 1968 he made a documentary, Don't count the candles, who won several awards, including the prestigious Emmy. In 1971 he was granted a patent for inventing an electric wheelchair, as he was also attracted to the world of design and the creation of new objects.
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Antony Armstrong-Jones was known among his closest relatives as "Tony." He was the only child in the marriage between lawyer Ronald Armstrong-Jones and Anne Messel. He was born in Eaton Terrace, Belgravia, London.
In his family there were prestigious educators, architects and draftsmen. At an early age he had to suffer the divorce of his parents, in 1935, when Tony was just five years old.
He always said that in his childhood he had lacked affection. He contracted polio and his parents sent him to Liverpool Royal Infirmay, a medical center where he spent six months, almost in complete solitude, because his parents did not visit him and the only person who came to see him was his sister..
As a result of this disease, Tony would be lame for the rest of his life. After the divorce, her mother left for Ireland, where she married an earl and had two children, Antony's half brothers. In this new home he did not have a good time, because it was evident that they treated his mother's children and the count better than him, who had taken a back seat.
As a child, Tony attended Sandroyd School boarding school from 1938 to 1943. He then entered Eton School, where he had some boxing triumphs. The first was in 1945, when he qualified for a school boxing finals..
The following year, 1946, he continued training and was able to obtain several praiseworthy mentions in the Eton College Chronicle. He later entered Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied architecture, one of his passions those years of adolescence and career that he would finally abandon after failing his second year exams..
Already in the young man's mind there were other concerns, so it was not traumatic to abandon the race. Luckily, her mother, Anne Messel, had a contact in the world of photography, Baron Nahum, with whom she learned all the basics of photography.
His idea was finally to be a fashion, design and theater photographer and Nahum encouraged him with those first apprenticeships in his photographic studio..
The Baron was impressed by Tony's talent, so initially as an apprentice he paid him a respectable sum of money but later the skills of the young man convinced him to have him as a salaried associate..
Antony Armstrong-Jones had an uncle, Oliver Messel, who recommended him in those early years for theatrical portraits. He also began to portray high society and received good money from the sale of the photographs.
In 1957 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh made a tour of Canada and the photographer was Antony, who met the queen for the first time, who would be his future sister-in-law and who would not look favorably on this womanizing man who had lovers permanently.
During the 1960s Tony achieved his greatest success as one of the most reputable photographers in England. At the beginning he was an artistic advisor for The Sunday Times Magazine, later his reputation grew as he took pictures of the street and portrayed mental patients.
But when he started working for magazines like Vanity Fair, Vogue or The Daily Telegraph magazine his name reached every corner of England and the world.
He had the opportunity to portray all kinds of talented artists and politicians such as David Bowie, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace of Monaco, Lynn Fontanne, Princess Diana of Wales, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and even the famous writers Vladimir. Nabokov and JR Tolkien.
Within Antony Amrstrong-Jones' prolific career as a photographer there was also room for film. His first documentary was made in 1968, Don't count the candles, for the North American chain CBS.
This work, which had aging as its central theme, won him two Emmy Awards. In 1969 he filmed Love of a kind, which dealt with animals and the British, in 1971 he made Born to be small, on people with growth problems and, finally, Happy being happy in 1973.
Apart from patenting an electric wheelchair in 1971, he was the co-creator of the London Zoo's "Snowdon Aviary" which opened in 1964. Years later he said that this creation had been one of his most important works, that named among friends as the "bird cage".
Tony's life would not have been the same without having been married for 18 years to Princess Margaret, the sister of Elizabeth II. Although he was known as “don Juan” and had no qualms about having lovers while he was married to Margarita and later to Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, he eventually became royalty..
Margarita's past did not have much to envy Antony's life either, because, until before the wedding in 1960, she had 27 boyfriends over the course of 12 years, a figure not low for the time when free love began to give. what to talk about and to be practiced with a large number of couples.
Among the boyfriends she had were pilots, lawyers, farmers, and even an Anglican pastor. The wayward life of Tony, now called Lord Snowdon, came to upset the conventional and conservative life of the royal family.
Some said Margaret said yes to Lord Snowdon out of spite, as she had been left by Peter Townsed for a 19-year-old Belgian girl. The princess received a letter from Townsed explaining everything about her and her new love; in a matter of days, she married Tony.
Things had not been easy, because her sister, Isabel II, forbade her to marry the photographer; but as in the past the same thing had happened with Townsed as well, this time she did not give in and said yes to Lord Snowdon.
She was already 29 years old and was in danger of becoming a spinster if this opportunity was wasted. Among other things, the new boyfriend was not liked by Elizabeth II as he was not a wealthy man..
The engagement was held at Westminster Abbey on May 6, 1960. The event was followed by more than 20 million people on television. The float that left Clarence House and arrived at Westminster was acclaimed by thousands of spectators, and many others were waiting for it inside the Abbey. She wore a beautiful white silk gown and a diamond tiara.
Although everything was not rosy in the celebration, because of all the guests only the king of Denmark attended and this was a consequence of the fact that Elizabeth II had previously rejected many invitations from other monarchs and they paid her with the same currency, although she was not the one directly involved in the wedding.
In addition, Parliament did not approve the budgets to pay for the food and everything that the event entailed, so her sister Isabel was the one who paid all the expenses of the couple.
The wedding was attended by renowned men such as Noel Coward, the dancer Margot Fonteyn and the writer Jean Cocteau, among others. They then went on their honeymoon to the Caribbean and had two children, David, who was born in 1963, and Sarah, three years later..
Antony Armstrong-Jone or Lord Snowdon believed in free love, so common in hippie communes during the 1960s. He always attracted women and men, he never hid it.
He did not believe in monogamy and that is why the two times he was married he had relationships with several lovers simultaneously. While married to Margarita, he had relationships with Camila, with whom he had a daughter, Polly, who he would only recognize years later..
In his studio and before the divorce in 1978 he had two lovers, actresses Jacqui Chan and Gina Ward. In addition, he used to run away from home to go see Jeremy and Camille Fry, a couple who were friends with him and Margarita and with whom he had intimate encounters..
After divorcing, he had as a lover the journalist Ann Hills, who would commit suicide on New Year's Eve 1996 by throwing herself from a balcony and dressed in full dress. He married Lucy Lindsay-Hogg and had a daughter, Jasper, and in 1998 he had a son named Jasper, the result of a relationship with his 35-year-old lover Melanie Cable-Alexander..
One of the infidelities that had a great scandal was his relationship with Jacqueline Rufus, 21, daughter of the Reading couple. This relationship lasted from 1968 to 1971 and ended because they were photographed and featured in a publication, which came into the hands of Rufus' parents..
They were scandalized and asked their daughter for composure, because Tony was a married man with children. Antony Armstrong-Jones died in 2017, when he was 86 years old.
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