VIDEO – Interview with Harry Benson

Harry Benson has taken another photograph. This is more than enough for all the Scottish press photographers to gather and pay homage to the great man. For he is great.

This is the photographer who has captured all the US presidents since Eisenhower, snapped The Beatles when they were having a pillow fight, and whose work was the subject of a marvellous exhibition at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2006.

This time Harry has photographed a lovely image of Her Majesty the Queen looking very relaxed and far from the formal look that is so often featured in our newspapers or on the news.

The Queen is pictured in her private study at Buckingham Palace where she holds private audiences with UK Prime Ministers. Since this portrait was commissioned by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and supported by the Friends of the National Galleries of Scotland she is photographed wearing a gold and diamond thistle brooch.

The Edinburgh Reporter was delighted to have the opportunity of speaking with him (“call me Harry”) after everyone else had left.

He said:- “It is natural. I try to get people to be what they think they are not, what I think they are. Too many portraits are of what the photographers think the people look like. I have photographed the Queen hundreds of times, but we don’t know each other. It was a private sitting room.

“You have got to take into account that she is 89. She is an attractive woman and it was a big honour.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueZVIbZfWws?list=UUpyjaNvEF_ryiKTJ6QxCkIA]