Life Through a Royal Lens, review: Diana and the Royal family as you’ve never seen them before

We’re used to seeing Princess Diana in photographs that show her as warm and relatable – because that was how she wished to be seen – but a profile portrait of her kept back by David Bailey from a sitting in 1988, and exhibited in a new exhibition at Kensington Palace for the first time, captures an altogether different, much starker and sublimely regal image.

Life Through A Royal Lens traces the ways in which British sovereigns have engaged with the camera in order to mould and maintain their relationship with their subjects, though within that overarching theme, other ideas emerge – not least the knife-edge between majesty and relatability, and the univeral anguish that comes from sitting in front of a camera.

Indeed, if you’ve ever been horror-struck by how you look in a photograph, take heart that you are in the very best company. In 1852, Queen Victoria actually smudged her face from the original plate of a portrait of herself with her eldest children. She looked “horrid”, she noted in her diary, a shame when the day had been “splendid for it”, and the children looked so pretty.

The picture, made by “Her Majesty’s Daguerreotypist” William Edward Kilburn, is one of about 130 images in a truly engrossing little exhibition. It starts downstairs, with an amuse-bouche of seven portraits from the 59 Dorothy Wilding made of the current Queen, a mere three weeks after her accession to the throne in February 1952. Wilding was chosen because she had also photographed the 1937 coronation of George VI, and thus suggested continuity and stability in a time of change.

But the exhibition begins in earnest upstairs in the Piggott Galleries where, following video interviews with contemporary royal photographers such as Chris Levine, we are plunged with style into the heady days of early photography. Victoria and Albert recognised the camera’s potential to fashion their image almost immediately, and their patronage of the new medium was integral to its rise in popularity.

There are more jewels in this room than I have space to mention: a locket that Albert commissioned for Victoria, containing photographs of them both and inscribed “Xmas 1861” – he died in the December, meaning she was given it posthumously; a Box Brownie snap capturing her unaware, in a sunlit garden and smiling; and a thrillingly strange daguerreotype of Albert from 1842. I’m told the red leather case that once housed it is almost threadbare, so frequently did Victoria carry it about her person.

Photography’s vital contribution to the traditions of royal portraiture is intelligently considered in images by the likes of Annie Leibovitz, Cecil Beaton, Rankin and Lord Snowdon – including the latter’s 1962 picture of Princess Margaret wearing the Poltimore Tiara in the bathtub, which did much to help modernise the idea of monarchy – and a stunning 1911 photograph of a then 17-year-old Edward, taken to mark his investiture as Prince of Wales, which calls to mind the close-cropped painted portraits of medieval kings. I also loved the outtakes that were selected by the Queen from Beaton’s photographs of her coronation, showing her children up to no good behind the scenes.

We’re used to seeing Princess Diana in photographs that show her as warm and relatable – because that was how she wished to be seen – but a profile portrait of her kept back by David Bailey from a sitting in 1988, and exhibited here for the first time, captures an altogether different, much starker and sublimely regal image. Also previously unseen is an outtake from a portrait of the Queen and Prince Philip to mark their platinum wedding anniversary in 2017. This one was considered too informal and personal for public release at the time, but in the wake of his death last year, has gained enormous poignancy.

The exhibition ends with a video loop of some of the candid images sent in by members of the public after a callout in the Telegraph last year, and with a photograph that was released by the Queen to mark her 60th birthday in 1986. Taken at the Royal Windsor Horse show, it pictures her with a Leica camera in front of her eye, brow furrowed in pursuit of the perfect shot. She is, apparently, as mad about photography as her great great grandmother. What I wouldn’t give to see inside those albums.

From March 4-Oct 30. Tickets: hrp.org.uk