Terence Donovan and his peers David Bailey and Brian Duffy, nicknamed The Terrible Three by the press, would transform fashion photography in the ’60s, bringing a new spontaneity and swagger to the genre that hadn’t been seen before.
Like Bailey and Duffy, Donovan came from a working-class East London background. He opened his first studio aged just 23. Early success came with a shoot of men’s fashion for Man About Town in 1961, and for the same magazine a year later, a series of portraits of actress Julie Christie. His informal, almost voyeuristic style, thanks to Christie’s gaze never meeting the lens, was groundbreaking.
Alongside his editorial work, Donovan’s commercial workload steadily grew. This would see him run a well-oiled professional practice, with multiple sittings in a single day not…