A Small Voice: Conversations with photographers and filmmakers (exclusive member content)
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A Small Voice: Conversations with photographers and filmmakers (exclusive member content)

Ben Smith

  • 204 Episodes
  • English
  • Last updated May 13, 2026
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282 - Richard Young

May 20, 2026 • E282 • 01:02:41

Richard Young is a photographer who was once known as the “king of the paparazzi”.

His portfolio is a who’s who of some of the biggest stars in film, music, stage and popular culture from the past fifty years. From gatecrashing Elizabeth Taylor’s party for Richard Burton’s 50th at the Dorchester to later being invited to photograph her Damehood celebrations. He can count the first photographs of Paul Getty Jr. after his kidnapping as just one of his many scoops.

He was born in Hackney to a Jewish family and his father ran a hosiery stall in Berwick Street market for more than sixty years. Richard has dyslexia and after being expelled from school at fourteen, he went to Soho and landed a job in fashionable clothes shop frequented by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, David Hockney and Francis Bacon.

A two-year stint in New York followed, working as a studio assistant at Electric Lady Studios, before he returned to London and found himself in a bookshop handed a camera and told to get on with photographing authors.

For the past fifty years, he has lived a nocturnal, high octane life of private jets, parties and exclusive events, eventually becoming as much a fixture in the world of celebrity as the people he photographed.

Richard lives in London with his wife Susan. His photography gallery is in London and has visitors from around the world.

On episode 282, Richard discusses, among other things:

  • Wanting to escape school
  • Learning that trust is currency
  • Crashing Richard Burton’s birthday party
  • And how the proceeds from the resulting picture bought him his first house
  • How his journey into photography began with a roll of blank film
  • Adventures in New York and Paris
  • Having a guardian angel
  • Still being sent on jobs at 79
  • Turning up to Freddie Mercury’s party in drag by mistake
  • How he navigated the switch to digital
  • Why he reccommends that young photographers experiment with film
  • Photographing flowers …and the east end of London
  • The importance of saying sorry when necessary
  • His gallery in west London
  • How the business has changed

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