‘No one told me what to do or how to do it.’ How Jonathan Becker became the pre-eminent photographer of 20th and 21st-century high life.

In the second part of our interview the Time Lost photographer talks about Frank Sinatra, Donald Trump and some of the darker places photography took him to.

"I didn’t really think of doing anything else, and I never did,” photographer Jonathan Becker tells Phaidon.com as he looks back on a five decade career, encapsulated in a new book, Lost Time.

Becker photographed for magazines including Interview, Town & Country, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, under the auspices of legendary editors from Diana Vreeland to Bob Colacello to Graydon Carter.

The two hundred plus photographs in the book are sequenced to tell both a compelling cultural history as well as a personal narrative of his life and career.

Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles, Buckingham Palace,London, 2001. © 2024 Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

Lost Time features two texts: a brief autobiographical essay by Becker himself, and an introduction by the book’s editor, Mark Holborn, who draws connections between the photographer’s work and the writings of Marcel Proust.

Becker himself is more prosaic on how he got here. “I hate decisions, and I just stick with what I know. From very early on I had a conviction that I could do this, and if I just stuck with my own way of seeing things, and that zone that one gets in, it would work."

Cindy Sherman in her studio, New York, 1993. © 2024 Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

In the second part of our interview (you can read the first part here) he talks about the hoops he had to jump through to get Frank Sinatra to pose for just one frame; why he made Donald Trump dress up as Little Lord Fauntleroy; and a couple of the decidedly darker moments and places photography led him into.

“It’s my story,” Becker says. “It’s the story of my involvement with photography and how photography recorded my experience and how I recorded experience with photography. And it doesn’t make any distinction between the experience I had, on or off assignment.”

When you’ve read the interview, buy the book here.

Diana Vreeland at my exhibition, Chelsea, New York, 1981. © 2024 JonathanBecker. All rights reserved

The Vanity Fair photos in the book from the '90s era have a particular dynamism about them. Compared to the more studied portraits of earlier and later years they really look shot from the hip. “That’s Graydon Carter’s fault! Graydon brought glamour and festivity to the magazine. He would send me to do stories on places that were much like stories I’d done earlier at Town and Country, but with Vanity Fair’s broader twist on things.

I’d go to Aspen, or to Palm Springs, or Palm Beach, or Capri, or the Adirondacks, and gather the gentry. Those were glamourous stories. Everybody was still around - all the old stars were beginning to come back into fashion and there were also all these glamourous new people. We’d be there for months, in the best hotels.

Graydon would complain, ‘you spend so much money!’ When I first got there he complained I didn’t spend enough money. My total budget looked like Annie Leibovitz’s catering bill.

But Graydon made a complete success of Vanity Fair. He was my fourth editor there. Just before him there was Tina (Brown), and Tina did a brilliant, interesting magazine and I did some of my very best work ever with her. She had a fabulous art director, and it was a very good time.

But I don’t know that Tina ever got out of the red. She spent a lot of money at Vanity Fair, with Si Newhouse’s backing. He put the pedal to the metal, he did not hit the brakes going into the curves. He gave it the gas and it was very interesting. But when Graydon came, he instilled much better order, and he had me doing more things.”

John Chamberlain, Kim Esteve’s private bar, São Paulo, 1994. © 2024Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

Were you conscious at the time that magazines really were having a moment? “Of course, yeah, very aware. Acutely aware. The actual heyday of magazines really goes back to the nineteenth-century, but these were also really good years.

But at some point magazines forgot about the readers. McKinsey came in and empowered the business side, convincing them they were the ones bringing all the money in and therefore magazines should focus on the advertisers. And they did focus on the advertisers and so the readers went away, and it was a train wreck. Magazines belong to readers.”

Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, Yangon, Myanmar, 1995. © 2024Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

You’ve photographed practically everyone, but was there someone you never got to capture who you really wanted to? “There was, but the moment’s passed. I always consider the next subject the most interesting. You have to.

There was a time when I really wanted to photograph Gabriel García Márquez. I wanted to photograph Fidel Castro, I really wanted to get into his face. But I don’t have any regrets. I don’t think, ‘oh gee, if only.’ I’m happy with what I’ve got. I wanted to photograph Sinatra . . . actually, eventually I did.

I went with Anne Hearst to Monte-Carlo to the Red Cross Ball. I was covering it for Town and Country. Anne’s family owned Town and Country.

Sinatra would give these big dinners every night for 30 people in the fanciest restaurant and pay for it all. There were three nights like this. Everybody left after dinner, and it ended up just being the three of us - plus his two bodyguards, who he was friendly with - all sat round a table with a bottle of Jack Daniels. That’s what you had to drink - on the rocks, and you had to keep drinking it. And, you know, it’s cough syrup after three of them. It’s horrible stuff.

He knew I had to do his portrait. And it took these three nights of sitting with him to get it. It was the hardest garnered picture.

Everyone would tell these stories while he was drinking to entertain themselves, including the bodyguards. I was telling some story, and he kept on repeating, “what kind of a stupid story is that?”

I was terrified. He kept looking down at my glass and yelling, ‘whadda ya got?’ And I said, “oh I’ve got Jack Daniels’. And he said, ‘nah. When I say whadda ya got? You say Daniel!” He was so difficult, and so terrifying. Then, finally, he said, ‘OK, you get one picture! You get to push the button once.’ I took two, one when he looked away.

I saw him again in Las Vegas and I was terrified he would say hello. He looked at me as if to say, ‘are you going to dare introduce yourself again?’ I didn’t. He knew how to do that to you. He liked to toy with people to some extent. But he was also really generous.”

Cuba Gooding Jr. and Tom Cruise, Annabel’s, London, 2015. © 2024 Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

In contrast, many of your subjects really warmed to you, why do you think that was? “People like it when you’re paying them attention, and in general, I clearly like what I’m doing. I enjoy my work, and my work’s about them and they like seeing people who are titillated and interested in them in such a way that they are nice to have around. They get inspired by my enthusiasm, and that just happens when I look down into a Rolleiflex.

It doesn’t have the aggressiveness of a 35mm camera where you look directly at people. I have this look of bemusement looking down into the camera and that’s what I think they responded to.

It’s not a concocted smile. I’m unaware of it. It’s not a full on smile, it’s something in my eyes that they like. It’s been commented on many times when I‘m working. But I’ve never ‘used’ it. If something’s not working then I don’t have that look so I have to move on and try and change things.”

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Élysée Palace, Paris, 2009. © 2024 Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

When embarking on a portrait what were you looking for in a subject? “I like to have a connection with people. That’s natural. I don’t try to make them more human. I go with the flow. That’s an important distinction. I don’t have an overlay. I don’t go in with a set up that I impose on people.

What’s going on there is clear for me, but I don’t try to impose a script on it. That seems totally counterproductive. I don’t have any preconception about what this person should be. I had to deliver things of course, so I did have methods and ways of approaching people - both in a relationship way and from a visual angle. I knew of things that would work, but I tried never to have prejudice about people from the little bit of research I’d done before meeting them.

I’m not illustrating a writer’s point of view at all. I make up my own mind. Often it can be completely at odds with what the writer’s narrative is, or what the public narrative is. But it’s perfectly complementary, it’s just a different kind of information.

I love it when things turn out differently than one would expect. That’s the best. People like to tell their own story. Not stories that are written for them by public relations agents. People like to confide, it’s human nature. It’s honest and gives them some kind of catharsis sometimes.”

Kenneth Jay Lane and Nicky Weymouth on their honeymoon, Hôtel deCrillon, Paris, 1975. © 2024 Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

Did you ever have any real disasters? “Someone kept asking me the other day, ‘what do you do if it’s not working?’ I prefer your word, disaster. You do, but it's tough titty, isn't it?

One has to have control of the circumstances, so that your subject thinks you know what you’re doing. I may go in with a template but it’s usually fake or a set up, and then I let things fall apart. I always look forward to the end of the evening when everyone is three sheets to the wind. That’s when you get the great photos. But businesspeople and politicians can be very challenging in that they give you a very strict time limit.

I had a hard time with Donald Trump. I photographed Trump a number of times. The first time I had fun with him. He’d bought a property owned by Katharine Graham and he was trying to turn it into a golf club, but it overlooked a reservoir, so you couldn’t do it, but he didn’t understand that, so he blamed it on the locals. He called them wasps, even though, technically, he was a wasp himself - an oligarchic wasp.

So I said to him, ‘I really want to get you dressed up as a wasp.’ He was really easy to have fun with because he was completely unaware of how he came across, the narcissistic affliction maybe.

The fashion department sent me all this Ralph Lauren stuff: tweeds, and brogues, and plus fours, and Argyle socks; and I got him all dressed up. He looked like a giant Little Lord Fauntleroy, with a floppy golf hat and golf sticks. Absurd. But he loved the picture.

And then he ordered 200 copies, and I learned a bit more about him in an ‘experiential’ way. . . “

Andy Warhol and his corsets at the fourth Warhol Factory, New York, 1986.© 2024 Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

Your resulting fall out with Trump is too knotty to get into but did you actually get close to any of your subjects after photographing them? “I got very close to Dr Kevorkian, (an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent who publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die) closer to him than I realised, in fact. I think he felt some affinity in the interest I had in him. He took me home one day to show me his paintings. They were wild.

One of them was of a Roman centurion handing over this head on a plate. It was Kevorkian’s own head, with blood and entrails everywhere and an apple in his mouth.

It was the weirdest thing you ever saw, but he obviously wanted me to see this, because he really wanted me to see what he had overcome. I actually felt a great admiration for him, because he was a person who’d turned his own peculiarities and weaknesses into what he felt was a public good, promoting euthanasia.

I had a similar experience with Bill Styron who had written this book, Darkness Visible, about his affliction, manic depression. He and his friend Art Buchwald used to take these long walks up at Martha’s Vineyard every day and talk about different methods of suicide.

They invited me along. You can imagine how depressing it was. I had nothing to contribute. What am I going to say? ‘Oh, I really like the plastic bag over the head, myself!’

Later in the day he said, ‘let’s do a picture on the dock.’ The water behind him was very still, and there was a rope curled up on the dock. He was sitting there with his head stooped and with his black dogs. I wasn’t even aware until I saw the picture afterwards. Symbolism. And it was subtle. What a picture.”

André Leon Talley, Pont Alexandre III, Paris, 2013. © 2024 Jonathan Becker. All rights reserved

Those kinds of intense experiences must have come at you day upon day, but what’s it like being Jonathan Becker now? “It’s different. Now I’m doing more private portraiture, and it’s well paid, but you’re looking through the lens of the person that’s paying you and I never had to have that experience. It’s like looking at my editors.

My weakness is that I’m averse to commerce in all its forms. A lot of photographers used their editorial work to garner advertising. I never wanted to do advertising; I just didn’t like it. I have this inbred natural aversion to anything to do with selling anything. I’m a disaster.

I got a huge kick out of being in magazines. Magazines were everything so it was natural for me to gravitate there and they just absorbed work. No one told me what to do or how to do it, I was really left to my own devices.

The irony of living without magazines is that now I’ve become a salesman of myself, of my own work and I don’t get that titillation that some people get when they sell something.

Servicing readers gives me great pleasure. Selling a print to one person… I’m grateful and appreciative that they like it. They put their money where their mouth is, and that’s great, but I don’t get an enormous thrill.”

Take a closer look at, and buy Lost Time here.