I can only say that Catherine will one day be queen and that the late Elizabeth would be very proud of her. I think we are surrounded by greatness.
Elizabeth II is often described as inscrutable, yet you were with her in an unusually intimate context. Were there any gestures that revealed something deeply human that the public never got to see?
I will never forget this moment: I was preparing work in her studio in Windsor. I didn’t realize she had entered the room and was right behind me. I felt her presence, turned around, and there she was, very close. “Oh, Madam,” I said, clearly surprised. In that instant, the connection was immediate, glance to glance, and I had a strange sense of the magnitude of her life experience, something unique. Special. I felt I was in the presence of an extraordinary woman.
That dry and devastatingly concise phrase—“You don’t need a passport photo,” that the queen said hints at a keen sense of humor. Did you witness other moments of wit or irony during the sessions that changed your perception from monarch to person?
By the second session I was over the awe of being in her presence as queen of our country. She was interacting with and directing my work, having previously managed her wardrobe with Angela Kelly. There were awe-inspiring moments, but I quickly went into practical mode. The atmosphere in the room, with my team, was relaxed but very focused. She made us feel comfortable, and the passport comment made the whole room laugh.
You’ve said the experience was at times “unsettling,” as if you were in a simulation. Can you explain that?
The most surreal moment was when I was explaining to Her Majesty what we were going to do with the various recording processes. She was in front of me, dressed in the clothes I had chosen days before. It was the first time we had seen each other, everything had led up to that instant, and it became almost dreamlike. In a moment I felt like I had stepped out of my body and was watching the scene. Surreal.
When you asked her to close her eyes and breathe between takes, you asked her, in a way, to meditate in front of her camera. Do you sense what she was thinking in those moments?
I think the closed eyes bring the image to a spiritual plane. During the second session she was very calm and, when she rested between takes as I asked her to, she seemed to enter a state of stillness, which I consider a doorway to the divine.
In imagining what a 100-year-old Elizabeth II would be like today, your portrait fixes her in a specific moment: the mid-2000s, in the midst of her reign. What would you like future generations to understand about her through her work?
Perhaps they will perceive the depth she had, beyond the formal and superficial interaction that her duty demanded of her for much of her life. She had a powerful spirit.
