Faye Dunaway, the Morning After
If one image defines O'Neill, it's this one. On the morning after the 1977 Academy Awards, Faye Dunaway sat by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel in a robe, her Best Actress Oscar for Network on a table beside her and the morning papers scattered across the ground. O'Neill knew he had something. The picture works because it refuses the glamour of the night before. It shows what comes after the triumph: the stillness, the weight of the moment. It has become one of the most reproduced photographs in the history of Hollywood. O'Neill and Dunaway later married, in 1983.
Elton John at Dodger Stadium
In 1975, Elton John played two sold-out shows at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, and O'Neill photographed him in a Dodgers uniform, grinning, at the height of his fame. It captures everything about the mid-seventies: the excess, the humour and a performer who understood that spectacle was part of the music. It remains one of the defining images of Elton JOhn's career.
Sinatra in Miami
O'Neill photographed Frank Sinatra in Miami in 1968, and the result is among the best portraits ever made of him. Rather than the polished crooner, the camera finds a man at ease and a little weary: tailored, relaxed, still the most commanding presence in any frame. O'Neill had a gift for earning that trust, which is why his Sinatra images feel so unguarded.
Brigitte Bardot on Set
O'Neill met Bardot in 1968, when he was sent to Almería, Spain to shoot stills on the Western Shalako, starring Bardot and his friend Sean Connery. They shared no common language, he later said, which only sharpened his focus on the camera.
The picture everyone wants came three years later, in 1971, on the set of Les Pétroleuses (The Legend of Frenchie King), also in Spain. It was part of a three-part series on Bardot. She was waiting to film a scene on a windy day, pushing hair from her face, and O'Neill saw the shot before he took it: a tight frame that would capture her as strong, wild and sexy. A gust came, he pressed the shutter, and the film took weeks to develop. He remembered the first sight of the prints as a personal watershed, the first time an image he had pictured fully formed arrived exactly as imagined.
It is now widely regarded as one of the most sought-after images in his archive.
Bowie, Hepburn and Beyond
He photographed David Bowie in the mid-seventies, at the moment the singer was reinventing himself yet again, and produced portraits that capture both the artifice and the intensity. He caught Audrey Hepburn with an effortlessness that few photographers managed. And decades later, in 2008, he turned his lens on Amy Winehouse, producing some of the most intimate portraits of her at the peak of her fame.
Why the Pictures Last
O'Neill's secret was simple. He wasn't chasing the shot; he was building a rapport. His subjects relaxed, and the pictures show it. They are glamorous, but never look staged.
His work has been celebrated worldwide, and he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement honour from the Royal Photographic Society, among other recognitions. He died in November 2019, leaving an archive that continues to shape how we remember the faces of the twentieth century.
Own a Piece of the Story
At Drax Gallery, we are proud to showcase Terry O'Neill's work, with limited edition prints available at our galleries in Winchester and Poole. Visit us, or browse the collection at draxgallery.com/Terry-O'Neill.
