Beaton designed book jackets and costumes for charity matinees, learning the professional craft of photography at the studio of
Paul Tanqueray, until Vogue took him on regularly in 1927. He also set up his own studio, and one of his earliest clients and, later, best friends was
Stephen Tennant; Beaton's photographs of Tennant and his circle are considered some of the best representations of the "Bright Young Things" of the twenties and thirties.
He was already taking photographs for the British edition of Vogue in 1931 when
George Hoyningen-Huene, who was a photographer for the French Vogue traveled to England with his new friend
Horst. Horst himself would begin to work for French Vogue in November of that year. The exchange and cross pollination of ideas between this collegial circle of artists across the
Channel and the
Atlantic gave rise to the look of style and sophistication for which the 1930s are known.
Beaton is best known for his fashion photographs and society portraits. He worked as a staff photographer for
Vanity Fair and
Vogue in addition to photographing celebrities in
Hollywood.
Beaton's first camera was a Kodak 3A folding camera. Over the course of his career, he employed both
large format cameras, and smaller
Rolleiflex cameras. Beaton was never known as a highly skilled technical photographer, and instead focused on staging a compelling model or scene and looking for the perfect shutter-release moment.
Beaton often photographed the Royal Family for official publication. Queen
Elizabeth, the Queen Mother was his favourite Royal sitter, and he once pocketed her scented hankie as a keepsake from a highly successful shoot. Beaton took the famous wedding pictures of the
Duke and
Duchess of Windsor (wearing an ensemble by the noted fashion designer
Mainbocher).
During the
Second World War, Beaton was initially posted to the
Ministry of Information and given the task of recording images from the home front. During this assignment he captured one of the most enduring images of British suffering during the war, that of three-year-old
Blitz victim Eileen Dunne recovering in hospital, clutching her beloved teddy bear. When the image was published, America had not yet officially joined the war — but splashed across the press in the USA, images such as Beaton’s helped push the American public to put pressure on their Government to help Britain in its hour of need.
Beaton had a major influence on and relationship with two other leading lights in British photography, that of
Angus McBean and
David Bailey. McBean was arguably the best portrait photographer of his era — in the second part of McBeans career (post war) his work is clearly heavily influenced by Beaton, though arguably McBean was technically far more proficient in his execution. Bailey was also enormously influenced by Beaton when they met whilst working for British Vogue in the early 1960s, Bailey's stark use of square format (6x6) images bears clear connections to Beatons own working patterns.
