There’s a story behind the beautiful black and white photograph of Queen Elizabeth II that was used by the palace to announce her death on Thursday.
The photo was taken on the Queen’s 80th birthday in 2006 at Buckingham Palace, by late photographer Jane Bown, People Magazine reports.
Bown was 81 when she took the photo — a fellow octogenarian to the Queen — and had been working professionally as a photographer since the 1940s.
“Queen Elizabeth II selected Jane Bown to take a photographic portrait at the start of her eightieth birthday year,” reads a description of the image by the Royal Collection Trust (RCT).
The photo was also featured in Exposures, a 2009 book from Bown.
“Working almost exclusively in black and white and with natural light, throughout her career Bown has produced astonishingly candid photographs that reveal the private side of her famous subjects,” reads a A National Portrait Gallery description of a past exhibit that accompanied the publication of Exposures.
This photograph of the Queen was also included in a special exhibit for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
Bown started taking photos for The Observer in 1949. She was awarded an MBE in 1985 and a CBE in 1995, as well as an honorary fellowship at the Royal Photographic Society in 2000.
The Queen called Bown an artist at that 1995 CBE ceremony, to which Bown replied, “I am not an artist. I’m just a hack.”
Bown died in 2014. She was 89.
The Royal Family announced the Queen’s death on their website using a photograph from 1953 at the Queen’s coronation — when she was 27.
The Royal Family website has also posted the first official speech by King Charles III.
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