Spring has brought forth a bumper crop of photographs by members of the royal family. No longer content to spend hours posing for professional snappers as their predecessors did, today’s young royals publish their own efforts. Prince Harry has rare opportunities to travel the world – indeed, it has been reported that the Sussexes are to be sent on an extended tour of Africa. To mark Earth Day, he has Instagrammed some of his nature photographs, including a monochrome portrait of a rhino resting its head on a fallen tree, its horned bulk majestic and vulnerable against silvery clouds.
As an ecological image, this is eloquent. The only trouble is, Harry’s aesthetic ambitions are too obvious. Black and white always smacks of pretension unless the photographer is a true artist. In this case, it’s all too clear the photographer is emulating one artist in particular: the great Sebastião Salgado, who travels the planet photographing endangered nature and oppressed humanity. But Harry isn’t Salgado. He doesn’t spend his life seeking images, but comes upon them as part of his royal lifestyle. This is just an ethical version of a privileged traveller’s “amazing” snaps.
Good for the Duchess of Cambridge. Her new photographs are simply portraits of her son Louis. Any parent would be proud to have taken them – as would many professionals. Each picture has an intense focus on Louis himself. This not only exhibits technical excellence, but communicates feeling. Kate is an excellent portrait photographer who can isolate her subject to let us see him as clearly as she does.
Here, too, there are artistic echoes, but they are more subtle. The duchess is an active patron of the National Portrait Gallery. I reckon she looked closely at its exhibition of masterpieces by the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, for her concentration on her child’s face is a poetic technique that Cameron pioneered.
Harry is play-acting at being a great photographer. The duchess takes family snapshots and shows they can be little works of art. You can buy travel, spectacle and beauty – or get them for free as a royal – but you can’t buy talent or love.
