John Stoddart

John Stoddart is recognized as one of the world’s most renowned photographers. Born in the United Kingdom he is known as “the photographer to the stars”, photographing glamorous celebrities such as Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sir Anthony Hopkins, to big name bands including “The Rolling Stones”.

A British photographer best known for his photographs of famous faces including Pierce Brosnan, Carla Bruni, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

John was born in Liverpool and joined the Grenadier Guards at fifteen. He has worked with everyone from Tony Blair to Catherine Zeta-Jones and even captured Daniel Craig on the day before it was announced he’d be the next James Bond.

He is best known for having taken scores of photographs of famous faces including Pierce Brosnan, Carla Bruni, Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Catherine Zeta-Jones. He was born in Liverpool and is a former Grenadier Guard. Based in Whitstable but often in London, Stoddart is self-taught and has been in the business for over 25 years.

he has been capturing iconic images of the world’s most eminent celebrities for the past 25 years. Known for photographing celebrities such as Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine, the British photographer has been lauded as one of the Top 100 Photography Heroes in Professional Photography Magazine, with EMI, The New York Times and Vogue among his high-profile clients. Now, Stoddart is showcasing a selection of his works at London’s celebrated French fine dining restaurant L’Escargot in Soho.

He has been lauded by Professional Photography Magazine as one of their "Top 100 Photography Heroes" and by Master Photographyas “the man with stars in his sights". A raconteur in his field, Stoddart’s past and present clients have included EMI, Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, Vogue and Virgin. He has published 4 books of his works – It’s Nothing Personal (1997), Peep World (2004), Flags and Badgers (2014) and Liverpool, before the Exodus (2016).

No matter the era, no matter the star, Liverpool born photographer John Stoddart captures his subjects with an air of glamour often lost in our modern world. Bringing back the power of Old Hollywood one shot at a time, his photography encapsulates the mystery and intrigue which once surrounded the silver screen.

From renowned auteur Martin Scorsese and screen icon Lauren Bacall, to the ethereal Tilda Swinton and eminent Anthony Hopkins, Stoddart has captured the greats at their greatest, keeping their powerful presence at the forefront.

In the audio interview below you will hear how John served in the British Army for six years. He says it was "Chance and Happenstance" that sparked his interest in photography.

He also worked in the post office in Liverpool on his return from the Army. Finishing his shift work at 1pm before picking his camera up to shoot the bands at concerts in the evenings. Bands such as Echo and The Bunnymen, Frankie Goes to Holywood, Pete Best and many more.. Whilst listening to Duran Duran himself.

Leaving his beloved Liverpool for London. Opening a photography studio in Mayfair. He decided to turn professional with his photography. He started taking photographs of the rock scene there. Having his pictures published in the National Music Press. Along with covering the Male Fashion scene. Described as GQ Magazine as "A Legend"

To learn more about John look at his website on this link http://www.johnstoddartphotography.com/news/

In this audio interview John shares his favourite music tracks of the day!

John's glamour shots in Loaded helped define the Nineties. Now he says laddism is out, and elegance is in

By Robert Yates

The butler answers the door to the handsome Belgravia townhouse and without a word points upstairs. A wry smile plays about his lips - as well it might. One flight up, I find his employer lying on the spiral staircase, dressed in nothing but her (very small) smalls. While I grasp for the correct protocol for the occasion, Marilyn Cole - now in her late forties, once the first full-frontal Playboy centrefold, and hence more familiar with the circumstances - opens her eyes, proffers her hand and asks if I would like a cup of tea. For the moment, she needs to get on with work, which means recreating the stretched-out pose she first rehearsed on the cover of the 1973 Roxy Music album, Stranded. And the work needs to be finished pretty sharpish, as the rabbi is due for dinner.

Directing Marilyn Cole is photographer John Stoddart, a 41-year-old Liverpudlian, often credited - or blamed, depending on your viewpoint - for 'the return of glamour to popular culture', to borrow his words. Glamour is a favourite Stoddart word. Elegance is another. He dresses in Savile Row suits: 'I like to shoot in hotels and you get better access if you look the part.' His slim build and good, strong face give him some justification for thinking he has the look of Al Pacino. When he phones the office after our meetings to ask how we might illustrate the piece, he says, describing a self-portrait, 'Maybe you could use the Al shot'.

You might prefer to translate Stoddart's 'return of glamour' as nothing more complicated than a shift - in magazines, advertising and elsewhere - towards women being photographed wearing fewer clothes. Either way, since he was used in 1994 as a photographic consultant on what turned out to be Loaded magazine, Stoddart has been a key player in what in polite circles is called the sexualisation of mainstream culture. Others might tag this the 'Phwooar! decade'. Certainly, if you could step back into the Eighties, and spend some time watching television or reading magazines and the broadsheets, it's a fair bet that you would be struck by the relative lack of (female) flesh.

In the Nineties, with sex as his signature, Stoddart has prospered - and way beyond the confines of men's magazines. He now receives lucrative advertising commissions. And only last week, he took photos of Jodie Kidd for Hello!. 'They're funny at Hello!,' he laughs. 'They say, "No splayed legs, John." But, of course, they employ me because they know exactly what I do.' Then there's Stoddart's profitable sideline as He Who Charms The Clothes Off Aspiring Starlets (For Mutual Benefit). Amanda Donohoe, Elizabeth Hurley and Catherine Zeta Jones have all come calling on him.

Amanda was one of the first and she was really game on,' he recalls. 'She really wanted to be noticed.' Actresses come to him, he figures, when they realise that the 'sober Spotlight shot is not perhaps the way ahead'. He first worked with Catherine Zeta Jones when she was feeling constrained by the 'rosy-cheeked, farm-girl' image, the legacy of her role in the television series, The Darling Buds of May. Now, after her performance in the film, The Mask of Zorro, 'everybody,' says Stoddart, 'is saying she's the sexiest woman in the world. Well, you only have to look at my old pictures of her to see that ' From the heights of fame, the actresses do not always regard the old Stoddart shots with equal fondness. The Hollywood advisers get hold of the new stars, he surmises, and decide that photographs of their commodity with her knickers about her head are not quite what's required. And so, though he became great mates with Catherine Zeta Jones - 'a lovely working-class Welsh girl up for a laugh' - he does not expect much work from her in the near future. (Zeta Jones has been shot by another photographer in the current issue of Esquire, one of Stoddart's regular outlets. The poses are very restrained, the sort of poses you can afford, reckons Stoddart, when you no longer need to be noticed.) Attracting attention (on behalf of his subjects, at least) is his metier. He met his match in Elizabeth Hurley, with whom he created some 'Hurley burley bordello shots' which she thought were 'fantastic'. However, when she began to hit the front pages, Hurley became very anxious about this Loaded session. 'She threatened me with the courts if I sold them on,' says Stoddart. 'But I wouldn't have done that.'

The Stoddart code, he says, is to behave with style and he claims to have turned down £20,000 from the News of the World for the Hurley bordello shots. (One of them is featured in his 1997 book, It's Nothing Personal.) However, the Hurley prints sell well privately, Stoddart adds, at up to £700 a piece. He wouldn't want anybody thinking he was a saint.

'Fifty per cent of a good photographer's job is about getting on with people,' says Ian Pendleton, deputy art director at Esquire. 'And John is very funny, very entertaining. He's overtly heterosexual in a very camp way,' a comment that makes increasing sense the more time you spend with Stoddart. Back in Belgravia, he is busy explaining to Marilyn Cole just what sort of effect her poses are having on the lower part of his anatomy. She is lying behind yellow police 'crime scene' tape. ('What can I say?' offers Stoddart. 'It's a fantasy.') The shoot is for a new American magazine, Black Book. As Stoddart points out, US magazines are following the lead of their UK counterparts and are in the market for 'glamour'.

Stoddart decides to join Cole behind the yellow tape for a self-portrait. But just as he is in position, he is disturbed by the arrival of Cole's husband, Victor Lowndes, ex-head of the British division of the Playboy empire. Lowndes is obviously used to Marilyn's ways - he married a Playmate, after all - but appears taken aback by the Stoddart set-up (there was nothing of this sort in the good, old healthy Playboy days). What's more, the rabbi will be arriving for dinner in five minutes. The yellow tape is pulled down, Cole slips into something more sensible and is ready again to be the perfect hostess. (Stoddart and I hide upstairs, before making a swift getaway.)

The Belgravia shoot was a special one for Stoddart. It was a kind of a closing of the circle, he figures. He has had his fill of the triumph of Phwooar!, 'totty' and the whole debased lexicon of lads' magazines. It was not meant to be this way, he says. He was seeking something else, he says, some style - something to spin off the markers he notices in the Sixties' photographs fixed to the Lowndes/Cole kitchen. Stoddart delights in the black-and-white images of Lowndes and his Playmates - martinis, louche drinking dens, the whole James Bond number.

It's a style difference, not a moral one, he says. He bemoans the cheesiness of much of the photography he now sees in men's magazines. Stoddart does not really 'do' morality. He does not spiel about women being 'in control' or 'powerful' - the usual glam photographer's defence. 'Vanity, not morality, is the key. If somebody is vain enough, or feels good enough about the way they look, they will do anything for the camera,' he argues.

This means only photographing women who feel they are beautiful? 'Yes, I admit I'm not interested in others. But feeling beautiful is the point.' He has tips to help. Sheer stockings, apparently, make everybody look like Sophia Loren circa 1965, while Elvis singing 'Suspicious Minds' makes women act sexy, he says. 'I photograph and I fancy.' He rehearses a much-heard argument that many fashion photographers are gay. His business, however, is heterosexual male desire, which might not always be edifying but is always 'honest'.

Stoddart was born and raised in Liverpool, the son of a shipbuilder and a nurse. At 15, he joined the army, becoming a sniper in the Grenadier Guards. He enjoyed the army, he says. He saw a bit of the world, got into photography. Ever the aesthete, his chief memory of northern Ireland, where he served for a time, is the poor quality of the photo lab he used.

Back in civvy street, in his early twenties, he started taking photographs of Liverpudlian bands, mostly for the New Musical Express. His timing was good. Frankie Goes To Hollywood were doing their best to get noticed, and Stoddart's shots of the band - one showed singer Holly Johnson thrusting a blade down the throat of fellow band member Paul Rutherford - could only help.

He spent much of the Eighties photographing pop people and taking profiles for the new style magazines, then beginning to make waves. It's Nothing Personal includes some fine portraits of men - including John Hurt and Martin Scorsese.

'That was all great. But all the time, I was being inspired by the hotels I got to stay at. I love hotels, the rooms, the bars. I wanted to put women in them.' We share a taxi together through Soho and Stoddart points out possible locations for future shoots. The hotels and bars we pass all whiff of sex and money and adventure. 'And what else is there?' he asks.