Eyes tightly closed and radiating calm and tranquillity, Queen Elizabeth II takes a rare moment to switch off and be alone with her thoughts. This groundbreaking image, captured at Buckingham Palace more than 20 years ago, has become one of the most compelling ever taken of the late monarch, who agreed to be scanned by lasers to achieve the striking effect. Now, three years after her death, the artist who created the photo – Lightness of Being – tells HELLO! how it came about almost by accident, and shares behind-the-scenes details of his sittings with her.
“This shot was actually an out-take,” says Chris Levine, who was commissioned by Jersey Heritage to take a portrait of the monarch to commemorate the 800th anniversary, in 2004, of the island’s breaking away from France and pledging allegiance to the Crown. “A couple of years later, I was looking through the work, and thought: ‘Wow, that’s pretty powerful.’ It’s the most evocative image of a royal by any artist, and it’s become a historic work.”
Royal portrait
“I’m not even a photographer; I’m an artist who works with light,” adds Chris, whose work includes holographs of Liam and Noel Gallagher and Freddie Mercury. “There were five or six household names in the running, and I was the wild card, but I got the gig. Since then, I’ve done some incredible subjects, but they’ve all come to me.” Chris, whose new book, Inner Light, showcases his work with Elizabeth as well as the famous names who approached him subsequently – including the Dalai Lama, Sir Elton John, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Banksy and Grace Jones – was invited to the Palace’s Yellow Drawing Room in 2003. He chose the Queen’s outfit: a navy blue dress, a white cape, a string of pearls and the George IV State Diadem.
“The commission was to create an image that would celebrate the modern relationship with the Queen after 800 years and into the future,” he says. As he blacked out the room and set up his laser scanner, his assistant tried to lighten the mood. “She said: ‘Ma’am, it’s just like having your passport photo taken.’ And the Queen replied, half-jokingly: ‘One doesn’t need a passport,'” recalls Chris with a laugh.
Another memorable moment came when Chris attempted to move the antique chair on which his subject was sitting. “It was a very nice, gold-leaf chair, about 400 years old, but as I rotated it, I heard this crack in the back leg,” he recalls. “The Queen said ‘ooh’, and I thought: ‘She’s going to fall, and I’m going to have to catch her.’ But she got up, I moved the chair and she sat down again. “On one level, she was just a very lovely old lady, but there was something very special about her,” he adds.
The Queen replied, half-jokingly: ‘One doesn’t need a passport’
Chris said he got the impression that the Queen wasn’t on her best form that day and was surprised when an aide invited him to return for a second sitting. “And that’s where the magic happened,” he says.During that session, Chris’s enthusiasm for meditation – born out of being a recovering addict – inspired him to synchronise his camera with the Queen’s breathing as it moved back and forth on a track. “I had just come back from a ten-day silent retreat, so I was in that kind of mode,” he says. “I like to bring my subjects to a place of calm, a place of stillness, and then an inner truth, or an inner light, is revealed in that process.
“There was a lot of light on her, and I said: ‘If Ma’am would like to rest in between shots, that would be fine.’ So that’s when she closed her eyes.” Lightness of Being has been on display in the National Portrait Gallery in London since 2008, while Chris’s commissioned piece, Equanimity – in which the Queen has her eyes open – hangs in the Medieval Great Hall at Mont Orgueil Castle in Jersey. It has also appeared on the island’s banknotes and stamps and on the cover of Time magazine.
© Chris LevineInner Light: The Portraiture of Chris Levine by Helen Chislett is published by Prestel on 21 October. To pre-order, visit uk.bookshop.org.
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