James Danziger published the first book on Sir Cecil Beaton, Beaton, in 1977, the same year that Sotheby’s acquired the photographer’s estate. He ran the James Danziger Gallery, his first such venture, from 1986 to 2000, where he represented the likes of Annie Leibovitz (whom he had previously supported during his tenure as features editor at Vanity Fair), Henri Cartier-Bresson and Mario Giacomelli. He then became director of Magnum in New York, after which he reopened a space in Chelsea for Danziger Projects, whose current artist roster includes Leibovitz, Chuck Close, Jack Pierson and the Sartorialist. Here, the gallerist speaks to NOWNESS about the English master.

Beaton's Beginnings

Beaton went through a number of phases, but what united them was the fact that he was amateur in the best sense of the word. He was someone who loved photography, and he loved people. He was not a particular fan of equipment and technique, so his earliest photographs were constructions. His earliest pictures were of his two older sisters, which he started taking when he was a teenager. They were very fanciful but had a kind of homemade quality to them, almost like they were creating their little home theatrical set. In the 1920s––once he had graduated from Cambridge and had started life a professional photographer––his pictures were very much like that. His first book was The Book of Beauty, and it was photographs of London society girls, and they were very much in the style of the pictures of his sisters. Occasionally there would be a surrealist nod––he would do something like cut out the bottom of a hat box, and someone would pop their head through it.

Beaton Goes to Hollywood

In the second phase, in the 1930s, his subjects changed. He moved to America, he did Hollywood stars, and in general they were pictures where the people were really quite natural looking. They were kind of superior snapshots. He became someone who was well known as a personality and got access to people, and was commissioned to do things because he was the kind of photographer who would put a subject at ease and could make the best of a situation. And a number of his photographs, such as those of Marilyn Monroe, were done in hotel rooms. He was just very good at making something of very little, in terms of the composition, in terms of the gesture that he got the person to make.

Beaton's Garbo Obsession

[There is a spread in the book where] Beaton has obviously just arrived in Hollywood and is much taken with the stars. It combines pictures cut out from magazines, with a lovely picture he took himself of Katherine Hepburn, and a slightly surrealist collage that he created by putting Greta Garbo's face into a calla lily. They had a complicated friendship. It was a romantic relationship to a certain extent, but Beaton was gay. Garbo was complicated. Beaton was very passionate about her and, from his diaries, you get a sense that the relationship existed on a sexual level for him. The relationship actually came to an end when she asked him to take her passport picture, and he came over to her apartment in New York, took the picture and then released the outtakes to a magazine. She never spoke to him again.  
 

Beaton and Royalty

The great thing about it was that the subjects felt comfortable with him. And I think that they were kind of elevated snapshots. [They] were not unflattering. And so, unlike something like Richard Avedon's picture of the Duke of Windsor, which was really a harsh and unflattering picture, Beaton was hired because they would be comfortable with the results—I think that's a quality in photography, and for photographers, that is easily dismissed. It's important to take pictures that people are going to be happy with.