“I’ve been repeatedly asked to write my autobiography – I have seen an awful lot of famous people at their best and worst – but I’m not interested in making money trading their secrets or mine. I want my pictures to tell a story not sell a story.” – Terry O’Neill
For more than 50 years, he has photographed rock stars and presidents, royals and movie stars, at work, at play, in private. He pioneered backstage reportage photography with the likes of Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, Sir Elton John and Chuck Berry and his work comprises a vital chronicle of rock and roll history. Now, for the first time, an exhaustive cataloguing of his archive conducted over the last three years has revisited more than 2 million negatives and has unearthed unseen images that escaped the eye over a career spanning 53 years.
Similarly, his use of 35mm cameras on film sets and the early pop music shows of the 60s opened up a new visual art form using photojournalism, to revolutionise formal portraiture. His work captured the iconic, candid, and unguarded moments of the famous and the notorious – from Ava Gardner to Amy Winehouse, from Churchill to Nelson Mandela, from the earliest photographs of young emerging bands such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace. O’ Neill spent more than 30 years photographing Frank Sinatra, amassing a unique archive of more than 3,000 Sinatra negatives. Add to that the magazine covers, album sleeves, film poster and fashion shoots of 1,000 stars, and The Opus – comprises the most compelling and epic catalogue of the age of celebrity.
