A compelling portrait of the man behind many of the best portraits ever taken

Jonathan Becker is one of the great visual storytellers of our time, our new book Lost Time collects photographs from across his career, charting his journeys in New York, Paris, and London from the 1970s to the 2010s

You may not quite recognise his name, but chances are at some point in your life you’ll have enjoyed looking at a Jonathan Becker photograph. Becker is best known for his five decades of editorial magazine work, having photographed for publications including Interview, Town & Country, Vanity Fair, and Vogue, working under legendary editors from Diana Vreeland to Bob Colacello to Graydon Carter.  The list of faces and names he’s captured over the years are a veritable roll call of late 20th and early 21st century celebrity, and include legendary personalities such as Andy Warhol, Paul Simon, François Truffaut, Billy Wilder, Fran Lebowitz, and Jackie O.

A spread from the book

Born in 1954, Becker spent his late adolescence photographing with a Rolleiflex camera, and in a summer course at Harvard, discovered the work of Surrealist photographer Brassaï. Although he failed the class - in typical Jonathan-Becker fashion - he parlayed his final paper into a meeting with the acclaimed photographer, who soon became his mentor. Through a series of similarly fortuitous encounters, Becker made his way through the kitchen of Elaine’s restaurant in New York, into the glamorous realm of glossy magazines, and around the world to the homes and estates of artists, politicians, writers, filmmakers, royalty, and more.

Our forthcoming book, Lost Time, is the first to survey five decades of work by the photographer and bon vivant. It presents both his personal and editorial photographs – many for the first time – revealing the dense narratives and psychological studies he captures within each carefully constructed frame.

A spread from the book

The two hundred plus photographs in the book are sequenced to tell both a compelling cultural history as well as a personal narrative of Becker’s life and career. As readers and viewers, we follow his travels through Paris, London, and New York society of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Becker’s pictures evince a profound understanding of his subjects. Included in the book are artists Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman; writers Arthur Miller and Eudora Welty; musicians David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Becker has likewise mastered the ability to evoke a sense of place – the interiors and lush landscapes in which he to places his subjects are not simply backdrops to portraits, but character portraits in and of themselves.

A spread from the book

The lush interiors of Buckingham Palace sit pages away from images taken on a yacht off Capri’s rugged coastline. On the front cover, a long blue diving board plank extends over the shimmering waters of Cap d’Antibes, while on the back, Becker himself sits at a game table in a worn Paris apartment, cigar in hand, the afternoon light shining through opulent draped windows. Throughout, Becker demonstrates his exceptional talent for capturing the essence of the people and places he encounters.

A spread from the book

The book features two texts, a brief autobiographical essay by Becker himself, and an introduction by the book’s editor, Mark Holborn, who draws connections between Becker’s work and the writings of Marcel Proust, which posit photographs as visual summaries of what went before, offering a window into the emotional weight of a person, place, or idea from the past. Altogether it's a compelling portrait of the man behind the portraits.

Take a closer look, and pre-order a signed copy of Lost Time here.