The best of both worlds! Duchess Kate’s portraits of her children help her maintain their “privacy” while still sharing their lives with the world.
“The Duchess of Cambridge is a very good photographer,” Kensington Palace curator Claudia Acott Williams exclusively told Us Weekly on Tuesday, March 8, of the 40-year-old royal family member. “She has started releasing her own photographs of her children as a way of sharing their progress with the public. … By releasing her own photographs, she’s kind of maintaining an element of control and privacy for them.”
The Crown in Focus author praised the duchess, who is the mother of Prince George, 8, Princess Charlotte, 6, and Prince Louis, 3, for her “slightly different approach to maintaining” her and Prince William’s kids’ public image.
“The royal family have continuously embraced the evolving technologies and evolving ways of sharing their images,” Williams explained to Us. “I think there’s an understanding which was started with Prince Albert back in the 1840s that this technology is going to be a key tool in their relationship with the world and that it will shape the role and purpose of monarchy. I certainly think that is something they will continue to embrace in the future.”
Kate has steadily released new shots of her children over the years to celebrate their birthdays, giving a “mother’s view” of the siblings.
“That’s unusual. That’s an intimacy that we don’t often get,” Williams told Us of the portraits. “It creates a unique perspective. It is very clever. It really allows the public in in a very intimate way, while still allowing them to maintain the privacy of family life.”
Kate’s interest in photography goes back to her childhood, Williams added, noting that she discovered the passion through her grandfather and wrote her University of St. Andrews dissertation on Lewis Caroll’s photography of children.
“You can see in the quality of her images that it’s clearly something that she has studied and honed,” Williams went on to tell Us.
In June 2021, Kate joked that George, Charlotte and Louis don’t love being her subjects. “Everyone’s like, ‘Mummy, please stop taking photographs!’” she said at the time while speaking to photographer Ceri A. Edwards.
Some of the duchess’ pictures, as well as more iconic images of the royal family, are featured in the Life Through a Royal Lens Exhibit, which debuted earlier this month at Kensington Palace. The attraction will be open through October.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
