Beaton, Sir Cecil Walter Hardy

Beaton, Sir Cecil Walter Hardy, (1904-1980), influential 20th-century British photographer and theatrical designer. His early portrait photographs, as well as his fashion photographs for Vogue magazine, broke away from the stilted, unimaginative style of the day to espouse an original, innovative manner that relied on unusual settings, poses, and backgrounds. His later work was more conventional, especially after he became the official photographer of the British royal family in 1939.

Beaton's first exhibition in 1926, a collection of photographs of his society acquaintances, impressed Vogue magazine and Beaton went on to work for the magazine for the next thirty years. During World War II Beaton photographed refugee children and wartime artists among other subjects in Britain, as part of a role as official war and documentary photographer for the British Ministry of Information. His poignant photograph of a three-year-old Blitz victim in hospital, clutching her teddy bear, became internationally famous. He then photographed the war effort in the Middle East in 1942, and travelled on to India and China in 1943 with the job of photographing the British Empire in a favourable light. After the war he photographed, among many others, French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, and American actors including Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, and his main romantic interest Greta Garbo.

Beaton also designed stage sets and costumes and published several volumes of photographs and memoirs, and a successful pictorial book, British Photographers, published in 1944. In 1956 Beaton worked as a costume designer for the first stage show of My Fair Lady in the United States, and he went on to win two Academy Awards in 1964 for his costume designs and artistic direction in the subsequent film version. In the 1960s Beaton photographed icons of the time including David Hockney, Andy Warhol, and Mick Jagger. Beaton was knighted in 1972.