The Man Who Loved Women, and Cameras

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Grace Coddington walked down the rain-slicked streets of East London one afternoon in 1959, clutching her model's portfolio as she searched for Terence Donovan's studio. All of 18 and aspiring to be a model, she knew she had to pose for him if her career was to take off.

She was not alone.

“He was just sitting there with his feet up on the desk, and I guess the girls were just rolling in,” Ms. Coddington recalled of her first encounter with Mr. Donovan inside his Yeoman's Row studio. “I walked into his studio and the first thing he told me is that he just got married that day. And I thought, ‘What the hell are you doing here at work?' ”

Actually, at just 24 years of age, Mr. Donovan was, along with David Bailey and Brian Duffy, leading a new movement of photographers who were moving away from the highly glamorous and conservative nature of 1950s fashion. They preferred the more relaxed, candid style of youth culture that was dominating the London scene.

After that initial introduction, Ms. Coddington posed for Mr. Donovan many times. He was also a cherished friend and adviser during her four-decade career in the fashion industry, even guiding her decision to work at American Vogue.

“He loved photography and cameras and everything to do with it,” Ms. Coddington, most noted for her role as creative director at Vogue magazine, said in a phone interview. “So much that nothing stopped him, even getting married.”

Terence Donovan/Terence Donovan Archive Man About Town, Sept. 2, 1962, Ireland. Models: Celia Hammond, Tim Davis.

Indeed, his artistic career outlasted that brief first marriage, as Ms. Coddington had presciently suspected.

Mr. Donovan, who died in 1996 at the age of 60, was at the forefront of capturing evolving trends, working with top fashion publications like Elle, British Vogue and the Sunday Times Magazine. Inspired by his own modest upbringing in East London, he photographed his models as friends and experimented with shooting outside the studio, using the bustling streets as his background.

Terence Donovan Archive Terence Donovan.

“They photographed girls that were very touchable and immediate,” Ms. Coddington, 72, said of Mr. Donovan and his colleagues. “To achieve this, they took them into the streets. They took them to places they would hang out in, and they just made it very real. Everything just got much more touchable, sexual and sensual.”

The results were memorable: a 1966 shoot for Women's Mirror magazine; a studio portrait of Twiggy posing in front of a British flag (Slide 11), her recognizable bright eyes and long lashes cast away from the camera; a black-and-white portrait of Naomi Campbell adorned with a Stephen Jones top hat for British Elle in 1988 (Slide 16). In between, Mr. Donovan experimented with more dramatic lighting and focus while working for Nova magazine in the 1970s.

His enthusiasm for fashion photography wasn't limited to women. He also spent part of his career photographing men, including one stunning image he shot in 1961 for Man About Town magazine of a man dressed in a fitted suit at the Grove Road Power Station. Barrels of steam engulfed the statuesque model as he stood firmly on the platform, hand in pocket.

Those images reflect Mr. Donovan's familiarity with his craft. He studied at the Bethnal Green Camera Club and apprenticed in the early 1950s under John French, a pioneering English fashion and portrait photographer.

Ms. Coddington acknowledges that the days of spending lavishly for experimental photography, as Mr. Donovan did, are long gone - making it even more important for budding photographers to understand the mechanics of their craft.

“Everyone wants to be at the top right away, and it's just not going to happen,” she said. “You've got to learn your trade, and Donovan would be the first to say that.”

His studio was a busy place, bursting with energy. David Hillman, who worked closely with Mr. Donovan in the mid-1970s, recalls one of his favorite studio spaces - a small, two-story flat above a supermarket in Chinatown. Jazz and pop music flowed through the narrow halls, and well-known models and photographers, including Mr. Bailey and Mr. Duffy, were often there.

Terence Donovan/Terence Donovan Archive Grace Coddington. Daily Telegraph, Jan. 22, 1987.

“He liked to have people around,” Mr. Hillman, 70, said. “We were always working and doing little sketches for the magazine, but we enjoyed it. We were having fun, too.”

From the moment they met, Mr. Hillman was attracted to Mr. Donovan's skillful yet uninhibited approach to photography and his ability to take assignments and make them his own.

“I would give Terence an assignment and he would come back with something I didn't even think of,” Mr. Hillman said. “But I liked it. I didn't want a photographer that was going to give me something I could have done myself.”

After Mr. Donovan's death, his wife, Diana Donovan, and Mr. Hillman combed through countless thousands of negatives in his archives, a process that took more than six years. The result is a new monograph, “Terence Donovan Fashion,” published in February by Art/Books.

“His body of work is varied, from his fashion work to other work that he did on his own,” Mrs. Donovan, 70, said. “But his fashion work is what he was most known for, and he loved and breathed it. I wanted to make a proper recognition of his work.”

The first time the couple met was in 1964 at a photo session for the then-popular pop magazine London Life. Mrs. Donovan was the photo editor and Mr. Donovan the photographer. They ran into each other again a few years later. By that time, he had begun to explore film and television production and she was working as a film publicist.

The same charismatic personality, charm and assertiveness that attracted Mrs. Donovan to her husband is what she credits for his ability to connect consistently with the people in front of his camera.

“He understood and really admired women,” Mrs. Donovan said. “He enjoyed their company and was enormously charismatic and sympathetic towards them. He was very honest but had a way of making women feel special in front of the camera. The results of the photographs were always pretty amazing.”

As for her husband working with some of the world's top models? Mrs. Donovan was simple, if direct: “It makes you think and tidy up a bit - brush your hair, perhaps.”

Terence Donovan/Terence Donovan Archive French Elle, Sept. 1, 1966.

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