There are some people who seem only to exist in the very glare of fashion and others, no less important, who choose to stand well outside the spotlight. Julian Lloyd is among the latter. He has a long, sometimes oblique, association with the fashion business but even some of his closest friends would not necessarily realise this to be the case.
However, even were he to have no direct involvement with fashion, Lloyd would be unable altogether to escape the link; his sister-in-law is Amanda Harlech, who used to be known as John Galliano's muse and now works with Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel.
Although he is primarily employed as a bloodstock agent and stud farm manager, Lloyd's own connections with the fashion world go back some 30 years. In the mid-1960s, he assisted photographer Bill King in his London studio. King later moved to the United States where the majority of his pictures were taken for Harper's Bazaar. Julian Lloyd, on the other hand, stayed in England taking photographs for both American and British Vogue, as well as Harper's & Queen. Then in 1973 he came to this country for a six-month stint at a Co Dublin stud farm. Twenty-four years on, he and his family are still here, living in Leixlip.
Lloyd has always taken photographs. He produced the images for one of Eric Clapton's album covers and took a portrait of the late Kenneth Tynan used for the critic's column in the Observer. More recently, he joined forces with photographer Perry Ogden to co-produce and co-direct a half-hour documentary called Who Needs Pele? about Ireland's presence in the last soccer World Cup. In 1996, he wrote and co-produced an hour-long programme about Danny Boy featuring Van Morrison, Sinead O'Connor, Marianne Faithfull, Eric Clapton, Ronnie Drew, Shane McGowan, John Hume and Barry McGuigan among others. Last year, he co-authored My Generation, a Irish collective autobiography through music.
He still runs a stud farm in Co Meath, but photography remains a presence, always powerful but only sometimes allowed to dominate. Similarly, fashion has continually been a part of his life with varying degrees of immediacy. He has long been an admirer of designers such as Lainey Keogh in this country. A few years ago, his daughter Poppy became a model, much photographed by Steven Meisel in particular and the favourite of designers such as Dolce & Gabbana. Lloyd's portrait of her appears here along with that of Iris Palmer, daughter of his old friend Mark Palmer and now a model, as is Jasmine Guinness, granddaughter of his neighbour in Leixlip, Desmond Guinness. All three were caught just before their respective modelling careers started to take them overseas and into another world.
The principal characteristic of Julian Lloyd's photography is its immediacy and openness. Black and white portraiture is his forte, with subjects over the years drawn from the wide circle of friends known by him and his wife Victoria.
He has regularly taken pictures of Marianne Faithfull both on and off stage, as well as Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, director John Boorman, writers Roddy Doyle and Anne Haverty, and actor John Hurt. Whoever he photographs is given the same treatment - Lloyd regards everyone with a fresh and frank honesty. These are not carefully constructed images of the fashionable. Instead, they are special people and moments boldly captured.