Portrait artists are like drill sergeants, commanding a few assistants to work on the lighting, the props, and the hair and makeup. When she was shooting big Vanity Fair group shots, Annie Leibovitz was more like a field commander, directing the efforts of dozens in composing the picture, making sure the subjects were posed in harmony with the others, and looking after myriad other small details.
The best party photographers, and their numbers are few, are like snipers. They fade into the background and grab their subjects in unposed assemblies, and most often without their knowing it.
Dafydd Jones is the sniper’s sniper—the best of the best. Where the skilled sharpshooter might use a Barrett M82 or a Steyr SSG 69, Dafydd, equipped with his Leica M4-2 and his Starblitz flash, stalks his prey and returns with images that can be exuberant or just plain lethal. I’ve worked with him off and on for the better part of 30 years, first at The New York Observer, then at Vanity Fair, and most recently at Air Mail.
Dafydd came to New York after a circuitous life, first in Wales, then at art school, where he initially began taking pictures to be used later as subject matter for his paintings. After a school trip to Florence, he realized his research pictures were better than his paintings, and that was that. There were odd jobs to follow, including shooting holiday snaps for Butlins merry-makers. Later, he set up a studio in Oxford, and right out of the gate he was a prizewinner in a Sunday Times competition for young photographers.
He found his true métier when he started photographing students at Oxford. His pictures of the smart set there, and later in London, captured the Thatcher era as well as James Gillray’s caricatures did late-18th- and early-19th-century Regency England.
His New York book, on sale next week, also captures a time and a place better than just about any published folio. This New York was the one of new money trying to catch the attention of old money, and of Wall Street vampires who raided the accounts of widows and orphans while their wives dined on quenelle and salads (dressing on the side) at places like La Grenouille and Le Cirque.
There are so many pictures in this book that I remember from when they were first published. The shot of the boats in New York Harbor, photographed from the air, was taken for me when I was at the Observer. Dafydd asked us to rent a helicopter for him, but we didn’t have the money. So he hopped a ride on a news chopper, and although the news cameraman had a harness that held him in the craft while he filmed, Dafydd had to make do with leaning out of the open door with a simple seat belt as security.
There are the glorious shots of Robert Mapplethorpe’s final birthday and a snarling Leona Helmsley, which, more than any other photograph taken of her, pretty much caught her being herself.
And there’s my favorite: Brooke Astor and her dachshund in social combat over some canapés with Iris Love and her dachshund. They probably didn’t even know Dafydd was there, given the way he purposely fades into the fabric of an event. Come to think of it, forget the sniper analogy. Dafydd would have made a formidable spy.
Graydon Carter is a Co-Editor at AIR MAIL