TO a society as in thrall to celebrity as we are today it seems incomprehensible that stars of stage and screen were once as approachable as anyone else.

“Nobody was arrogant enough to say they didn’t want their pictures taken, we were all making it up as we went along,” says photographer Philip Townsend, who graduated from Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design in 1959 and became one of the first snappers to document what became known as Swinging London.

He took the first ever publicity shots of The Rolling Stones and captured some of the most famous faces of the 20th century including The Beatles, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Maria Callas, Twiggy and Harold Wilson.

And he puts it all down to a mix of guile and happy accident.

“I wasn’t a really first rate student so when I left school, my mother didn’t know what to do with me. We saw an advert on the front of The Times for an apprentice to a society photographer in London and she wanted to move to London because the Gaming Act had come and there were casinos there.

“So I was 19 and had got this job and was sent off to the south of France by Tatler to cover Who’s Who for the summer. I did very well and as I’m quite good at networking I had got to know the PR for Princess Grace and Rainier who asked me to come back the following year.

“I was sitting in the square in Monte Carlo working out my next move when this young lad came and sat next to me and got chatting. It turned out he was only 17 and was going back to London to work for Mary Quant, but he said the future was music and he was going to find a rock ’n’ roll band and make them the biggest in the world.”

The swaggering youth turned out to be Andrew Loog Oldham, who subsequently found his band and duly called Philip to photograph them. They were called The Rolling Stones.

“He told me to make them look mean and nasty. Well, if you look at the first shoot you’ll see I only ever got a couple of them to look mean and nasty at the same time, never all of them. Anyway, he didn’t pay me but he said I could keep the copyright as the pictures would be worth something one day.

Philip’s shots of the Stones are among the 60 or so images that make up Mister Sixties: Philip Townsend’s Portraits of a Decade, a new exhibition which opens on January 24 at the Arts University College at Bournemouth where Philip is now an honorary fellow.

His work is noticeably different from the more closely focussed portrait shots we have become used to seeing. His subjects are rarely all looking at the camera and his frames are invariably wide enough to give some idea of what’s happening around the subject. The style became known as reportage.

“I just went out with a camera and tried to make people look good under the circumstances,” he said.

Mister Sixties

Philip Townsend’s Portraits of a Decade runs in The Gallery at the Arts University College at Bournemouth from January 24 until March 4.

His book, Mister Sixties, gives an intoxicating taste of those exciting times when no-one knew where the social upheaval, fashion and music would lead. The coffee table book documents the style and the musical revolution that made the sixties swing.

Mister Sixties is available now from wornby.com, philiptownsend.com and Amazon.com.

You will also be able to buy it at The Arts University College at Bournemouth when the exhibition opens.

Townsend’s Portraits of a Decade runs in The Gallery at the Arts University College at Bournemouth from January 24 until March 4.

His book, Mister Sixties, gives an intoxicating taste of those exciting times when no-one knew where the social upheaval, fashion and music would lead. The coffee table book documents the style and the musical revolution that made the sixties swing.

Mister Sixties is available now from wornby.com, philiptownsend.com and