Lord Snowdon was born as Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones on March 7, 1930 in London. In 1960, he married Prince Margaret. During the 1960s, he worked as the picture editor of The Sunday Times magazine. The couple divorced in 1978; Snowdon remarried that same year, divorcing again in 2000. In 2001, his photography was featured in a career retrospective. In 2008, writer Anne de Courcy published his controversial biography.

Creativity ran in Lord Snowdon’s family, and he was no exception. His great-grandfather was famed Punch magazine cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne, and two of his uncles were noted architects. In his early twenties, Lord Snowdon failed his exams at Cambridge University and left school to become a photographer.

At first, Lord Snowdon’s photography focused almost exclusively on design, fashion and theater. Soon, Lord Snowdon managed to establish himself as a successful portraitist through his photos of British royals, including Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1957. In the 1960s, Lord Snowdon landed a job as the picture editor of The Sunday Times magazine. By the 1970s, his work had placed him among England’s most well-respected photographers.

In 1958, during Lord Snowdon’s early photographic career, he met Queen Elizabeth II’s sister, Princess Margaret. The two were married in 1960. Lord Snowdon was the first commoner in nearly half a century to marry a king’s daughter. The following year, he was granted the title “First Earl of Snowdon.”