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Royal photo display seeks public prints

By Hannah Furness

TIME to dig out the photo albums and dust off the negative boxes: the Royal family needs you.

Curators at Kensington Palace are seeking submissions from amateur photographers for a new exhibition chronicling 200 years of royal life. The best will be mounted alongside some of the most famous images of the family in existence, from those taken by professional photographers, including Cecil Beaton and Antony Armstrong-jones, to the Duchess of Cambridge herself.

The exhibition, called Life Through a Royal Lens, today calls on members of the public to show off their own home photo albums, giving a glimpse of the other side of royal duty.

The public’s-eye view of royal engagements is intended to give a new perspective on the walkabout, with more candid snaps of the Queen and her descendants than have ever been displayed before.

They will be subject to strict guidelines to protect royal privacy, with no pictures of the family going about their business “off duty” accepted.

The best images will join the exhibition as part of a digital display which will place them alongside work from professionals including Norman Parkinson, Rankin and Annie Leibovitz.

The show is being curated by Historic Royal Palaces (HRP), which oversees the public opening of parts of Kensington Palace, and will finally open in March after suffering several delays thanks to coronavirus lockdown.

Curators hope to show how photography created an “unprecedented intimacy between Sovereign and subjects”, right up to the modern day, where many official engagements “include a moment in which onlookers gathered for the occasion can see and take pictures”.

They include a front-page picture of the so-called “Fab Four” on Christmas Day 2017, when the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Duke and Duchess of Sussex walked to church together in front of the annual crowd of well-wishers at Sandringham.

Taken by local Karen Anvil, the picture made front pages in the national papers and earned her at least £40,000.

The HRP exhibition is now seeking similar pictures which have not previously been published.

The display will also include a selection of photos taken by members of the Royal family themselves, seen for the first time.

A photograph of the Cambridges with their three young children clapping for the NHS outside their home in Anmer, Norfolk, during lockdown will be displayed alongside a shot of George VI and Queen Elizabeth in wartime London, similarly trying to rally the nation.

Many of the images on show will be loaned by the Queen from the Royal Collection.

Life Through a Royal Lens opens at Kensington Palace on March 4 and is included in the price of palace admission.

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