Behind the lens

DAFYDD JONES Documentary photographer and chronicler of high society in England in the 1980s

- DAFYDD JONES

www.dafjones.com

Dafydd Jones has been photographing the great and good at play for five decades, his break being commissioned by Tina Brown, former fêted editor of Tatler magazine. His collection of photographs from the 1980s has appeared in several books, including Oxford: The Last Hurrah. More recently, he turned his lens to our contemporary obsession with smartphones in his 2019 book Screen Time. With a new volume of photos having just been published, we sat down with Jones to discover more about his candid photography and what has changed since he attended high society events in the early 1980s.Photographing events for Tatler must have been an amazing experience. You were paid a flat fee with no expenses, so was the work fun as well as pressured?

It was hard work. Getting something interesting at a party is difficult and I had an editor with high standards, so I was learning as I went along. It was enjoyable to be employed doing something I love. I met a lot of eccentric people so it was a lot of fun.

Was covering high-society events a good route for a young photographer to get published back then - a counterpoint to the unemployment affecting the rest of the country?

In retrospect, it was a good route a specialist niche that had been overlooked by most photographers. The anti-social hours also put some off. Photographers wanted to do fashion, portraits, landscapes or war photography. In England, this was before the advent of celebrity parties and an increase in event photographers.

Which camera kit did you use to shoot the photos? And did you do your own developing and printing?