The Photo of a Lifetime

Photographer and author Chiles Larson snapped an iconic picture of Queen Elizabeth II in 1957, which he hopes to make one of a pair during her 2007 visit to Jamestown. April 30, 2007

Transcript

Lloyd Dobyns: Hi! Welcome to Colonial Williamsburg: Past & Present on history.org. This is “Behind the Scenes” where you meet the people who work here. That’s my job. I’m Lloyd Dobyns, and mostly I ask questions. Queen Elizabeth will pay a visit to the Historic Triangle this May to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, and I am told she'll make a brief stop at Colonial Williamsburg. Today's conversation is with Chiles Larson, who is supposed to be retired, but isn't; he writes books. In 1957, he was a volunteer photographer at Williamsburg, and took pictures of Queen Elizabeth during her first visit. I was told in one place that you were the pool photographer.

Chiles Larson: Lloyd, that was the case, it was sort of unusual in that I photographed the queen looking at the Magna Carta, and the Magna Carta was in a very small exhibition area, so it was determined that only one still photographer and one television photographer could be in there. Well, there were three wire services in those days: AP, UP, and International News Service. One of them was to be the pool photographer. Apparently, they weren't satisfied with how the straws went, and how I ended up being asked to do this, I have no idea. Anyway, that's what happened.

Lloyd: Well, you were actually working for your father, weren't you?

Chiles: Yes, I had been in the Air Force during the Korean business, and had gotten out in '55, came back to Williamsburg to go back to college. Well, there was a vacancy on the Colonial Williamsburg photo staff, and so I took that, wanting to have a career as a photojournalist. Did that for two years, and finally decided it was time to go and get certain lab courses out of the way, so I went back to William and Mary in September of '57. My dad was a newspaperman, one of the editors on The Virginian-Pilot. And he said, "We need every body we can put on this job, would you like to shoot these pictures?" So that's basically how I ended up taking pictures on that particular day.

Lloyd: There was one other story you had about taking a picture of the queen and the mace?

Chiles: Yes, I'd almost forgotten this aspect of the day. The queen also went to William and Mary and addressed the townspeople from the balcony. Before that happened, or maybe it was right after, I was told that the city of Norfolk had a royal mace which had been given to the city by Governor Dinwiddie. Anyway, the chief of police had this mace, silver mace, on a velvet cushion in the great hall of the college. So I was in there, and I looked through the viewfind, and it looked to me like the queen was not going to be in the picture quite well enough. And I don't know whether I said this or not, but I think I indicated that the queen was not going to be in the picture. And I think one of the aides said, "You're not to address the queen until she addresses you." But anyway, we got the picture.

Lloyd: (Chuckles.) Did the queen ever address you?

Chiles: No, she didn't even look my way, but I think she heard enough to know to move.

Lloyd: To ignore you intentionally after that.

Chiles: Indeed, indeed yes.

Lloyd: Did you stay with taking pictures?

Chiles: Well, I've always kept it as an avocation, Lloyd. As you know, you and I were competitors back in the early '60s, when I went with the ABC affiliate and you were with WAVY. So I did that for a couple of years, and my career ultimately carried me to Washington, where I was with the Securities and Exchange Commission for most of the '70s and '80s as a press officer there. But over the years, I've managed to get published. I've done a book on Virginia called "Virginia's Past Today," which has over a couple of hundred photographs in there, photo essays. And I'm still actively getting published in magazines such as Virginia Living, I do travel pieces for them.

Lloyd: Do you think you're going to be able to get pictures of the queen on this visit?

Chiles: Well, I have been told how to proceed with getting credentials, and I'm following up on that, so the fat is still in the fire, so to speak. Hopefully I'll be able to do it.

Lloyd: You can tell people who are still active doing things, and people who are retired; you try to get here, and I'm trying to stay away.

Chiles: (Laughs.) Listen, you're sitting over there interviewing me, you don't get away too far, Lloyd.

Lloyd: Far enough. Silly question -- you're taking pictures of the queen, you know she's the queen, you know it's a big deal. You're a young man, you're still in college. How did you feel?

Chiles: Well I can remember looking at her when she came in to look at the Magna Carta. She was a beautiful, radiant woman, and I was struck by that. The picture that I got of her, she's beaming, and it's quite a nice shot if I do say so myself. It is currently being exhibited at Jamestown, along with other images representing earlier anniversaries. The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk exhibited this picture recently in an exhibition that was "One Hundred Years of Great Virginian Pilot Photography," so this was featured in the section on celebrities that have visited the tidewater Area. So, the picture's gotten some circulation recently.

Lloyd: Did you, prior to that, ever think that you would get a picture of the queen, or the King of Belgium, or whoever – royalty? I mean, Virginians are not much used to royalty, so it strikes me as sort of odd that a kid from Tidewater who's going to William and Mary suddenly is the queen's photographer.

Chiles: Well, that was just good luck. We do have some American royalty, as you know, and that comes in the form of Hollywood celebrities. I did have an opportunity to photograph Marilyn Monroe arriving in Korea back in February of 1954. I was an Air Force photographer stationed at a place called Kempo. She arrived at Seoul City, and I took several of my photographer buddies with me. We arrived, and it must have been 10,000 GIs in a semicircle around this red carpet. They said, "Chiles, we're not going to get near there." I said, "Oh yes we are." They said, "How are you going to do that?" And I said, "You see that ramp over there on the right? She's got to walk down that ramp. We're the official ramp pushers." So we pushed the ramp over the red carpet, and we were at the base of the steps when she came down, so the pictures were fine.

Lloyd: (Laughs.) My admiration, over the years, has always been for photographers who can figure out anything. The guys I worked with overseas, the television photographers, could actually, no matter what, puzzle out a way to do anything I wanted them to do.

Chiles: Well, it's true. I've known quite a few well-known photographers who certainly are inspirations to me. And it's a wonderful medium, it really is. I enjoy writing as well. I can remember trying to get a little bit puffed up over a picture that I had taken, and one of my writer friends said, "Remember this always, Chiles: a picture may be worth 10,000 words, but takes words to say that."

Lloyd: (Laughing.) OK, that was a tip for you. What would you say is a tip for taking pictures of the queen – other than don't speak to her?

Chiles: Well, I think anytime you're photographing a subject such as the queen, you certainly want to get as close as you can, obviously. And don't be nervous, hold the camera steady. That's true with anything when you're taking pictures.

Lloyd: Was it difficult to get as close as you wanted to? I should imagine that in '57, security might not have been as tight as it is now.

Chiles: No, I don't think it was, Lloyd. Again, the area where the Magna Carta was displayed was a relatively small room. But the fact that there was only one other press photographer, a TV cameraman and myself, meant that we had enough room not to get in each other's way. The rest of the entourage was not crowding into the room as well. So, it was fine.

Lloyd: Do you remember who the TV man was?

Chiles: I do not, I don't remember at all. But you know, in those days, it was pretty much film.

Lloyd: It was all film in those days.

Chiles: Sixteen millimeter black and white, I had a Bolex camera when I was with WVEC, and for this occasion, I was shooting a speed graphic. So this was a cumbersome camera, you had to change flashbulbs.

Lloyd: That was the old 4 by 5, right, 4 inch by 5 inch?

Chiles: Yeah, the old 4 by 5 speed graphic.

Lloyd: I worked with one of those in '57.

Chiles: Yeah, you were at Washington and Lee, I saw some of your work there.

Lloyd: I tell you one thing, I couldn't have been happier when I switched to a single-lens reflex 35 millimeter, which you could fit in the palm of your hand.

Chiles: Absolutely. I just bought my first digital camera last fall, and I'm enjoying doing that. Of course, I'm a volunteer now with Colonial Williamsburg, and I'm trying to stay up to speed with all the innovations with regard to digital work.

Lloyd: I have not yet brought myself to buy a digital, and I know I have to, one of these days. Something just occurred to me. You talked about 1957, at the Colonial Williamsburg Web site, there are 1957 photographs of the queen's visit, but I don't know if you took any of them or not.

Chiles: I have not seen that. As I said, one of the editors suggested that I send a portfolio of my work to the queen's private secretary, which I did. I received a gracious letter from Sir Michael Adeane, who was her private secretary. I remember going to my mailbox, back in '57, as a young student – I wasn't so young then, I was a veteran – and seeing this letter with the royal crest on the back embossed, and opening it. I can paraphrase it a little bit: "The queen wishes to acknowledge your kind gift of these photographs. I laid them before the queen." And I just got to chuckling, thinking how these pictures were laid before the queen – maybe she was sitting on the throne, and he was dropping them on the floor as he backs out of the room. I don't think that's the way it happened, but that's the way I thought of it when I first read it.

Lloyd: It's a good image, and I'm going to keep it no matter what.

Lloyd : That’s Colonial Williamsburg: Past & Present this time. Check history.org often, we’ll post more for you to download and hear.

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