Anwar Hussein dead at 85: He was the longest-serving official photographer to the Royal family

In June 2024, I reported that royal photographers Anwar Hussein and his sons Samir and Zak were sharing their iconic photographs of the late Princess Diana and her family at a photography exhibition that took place in London at Dockside Vaults in St Katharine Docks, close to Tower Bridge.

Alongside the photographs were first-accounts of the stories behind them. The photos of the late Princess Diana included her walking through a landmine field when she visited Angola in 1997, her handshake with an AIDS patient, sitting alone outside the Taj Mahal and the ‘revenge’ dress she wore on the same night King Charles (the then Prince Charles) announced on national television that he had been unfaithful to her.

Anwar Hussein’s sons Samir and Zak followed in their father’s footsteps and captured the lives of Princess Diana’s sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. The late Anwar Hussein said of the exhibition at the time that “I am honoured and humbled to have been given the opportunity to photograph Princess Diana so extensively and to have had the pleasure of having many friendly and insightful conversations with her. I am delighted that the images captured, as well as those of my sons, are coming home to London to recognise and memorialise such a remarkable woman and her sons. There are so many memories of our two families connecting and creating a special relationship, which I am pleased to be able to display in such a unique way through the Exhibition.”

Anwar Hussein first began working as a freelance photographer in the 1970s and ran into ‘official royal photographers’ when he occasionally covered royal events. He told The Telegraph in 2016 that“At the time I had long hair and dressed very casually; they wore smart suits and ties. They told me I’d never make it, so I became intent on proving them wrong.”

“It struck me that official photographs of the Royal family were very stiff and formal, so I set out to avoid that. I shot them from farther away and captured them between poses, to show them looking natural.”

After impressing Palace press secretaries with his photographs, he began being invited on tours and was accredited as an ‘official’ royal photographer. He had a close rapport with the late Princess Diana and covered her courtship with the then Prince Charles, subsequent marriage honeymoon, and unfortunately her funeral too.

In 2021 Anwar Hussein said of his photographs of Princess Diana that “I tried to show all the emotion, whether laughing her head off or crying. One time, when somebody gave her roses in Scotland, I asked her, ‘Why are you crying? Why are you upset? Did I do that with the picture?’ And she said, ‘Because Charles has never given me any rose’. ”

Anwar Hussein was married to Caroline Morgan, the mother of his sons, Samir and Zakir who are both official royal photographers.