My Century Home Page

Broadcast on Friday 1st October 1999

JAYNE FINCHER

My name is Jayne Fincher. I've taken photographs of the British Royal Family for probably 25 years now. For 17 of those years, I really did specialise in photographing Diana, in an official capacity. I was the only woman in the press corps, really. And also I was only a couple of years older than her. So we instantly had a sort of rapport. She wasn't an angel. In no way was she an angel. But she was very human. And there was something - I can never quite put my finger on what it was about her. But you would walk into a room and you would never forget her. It was very complicated. And it's quite unusual, when it was somebody who, we now know, was such an unhappy person, but who had this sort of magnetism, so that everybody came towards her.

One of the pictures of her that always stands out for me was during a big trip that she and Charles made to India, in the early '90s. And she went to see the Untouchables. And these are really the lowest of the low, as they consider them - people will have nothing to do with them. But she was there, on her knees, holding their hands, touching their feet. Even the lepers, with their toes all missing - she was touching their feet and looking at them. It was a very poignant time. And there was a lovely photograph that I took in the hospice for the sick and dying - Mother Teresa's hospice in Calcutta. It's hard to describe. This whole place is grey. Everything's grey. The walls are grey. The blankets are grey. People are lying on the floor. They don't have beds. And there's no colour in there. And she walked in, with this pale pink dress on. She looked like this vision of freshness and brightness, that came in, with that giggle of hers. And in a very compassionate way, she wandered through all these people, who looked so ill and only had days to live. And she was holding their hands and talking to them and stroking their heads and even feeding them. She took mints with her and was feeding them with mints. Apparently the last of your senses to go is your taste. And she'd gone to the trouble of finding this out and taking mints with her.

Many times people in the street say: "Oh, don't you think it was all for the cameras? She loved the cameras." And yes, she did like the cameras. And often she did play up to them. Usually, it was in a setting where she'd got a new dress and she knew she looked absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. And she'd sort of wiggle her bottom at us and show off a bit. But usually in those serious situations, it wasn't for the cameras really. You could tell it was a genuine compassion she had - a genuine compassion and interest. You'd see tears in her eyes. She would be moved to tears.

When she died, I was totally and utterly shocked. And the day of the funeral, if I hadn't had an autofocus camera, no way could I ever have taken a picture. Because I was in a terrible state. It just upset me so much. I suppose that she broke the mould so much, of royal women. And I don't think that was easy for her. I think it probably cost her everything in the end to do that. And she was very much a touching person. She liked to touch. And she couldn't keep her hands off her own sons. If you saw her with her sons, she'd always be stroking their heads and hugging them, almost to the point where they'd be embarrassed. But even when she was with somebody she didn't know, she'd walk into a room and she'd sit on a hospital bed and instantly put her arms round somebody.

I remember one of the last jobs I did with her was with the London Lighthouse, the AIDS place in London. And I went round with her, on my own. I was the only photographer allowed to go into the rooms where the patients were in bed. And she walked into each room. "Shove up", she'd say to the person in the bed, "let me sit next to you on the bed." And she'd snuggle up on the bed with them, put her arm round them. And she'd say: "Oh, that's a nice aftershave". And then she'd launch off into this conversation, very naturally, all the time with an arm around them or holding their hands - physical contact all the time. I just don't really think of her as dead. I think: "Oh, she's gone off to do something for a long time, and I'll be back photographing her next week." I do miss her.

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