16-05-2025
Princess Marianne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn obituary: photographer
Whenever Princess Marianne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn found herself in high society, which was often, she would unclasp her Chanel handbag to retrieve a small camera that she kept hidden there 'like lipstick' and begin to snap.
She knew most of her subjects already — she once said that she 'always photographed her friends as friends' — so they were instinctively at ease. The photographs she took, some 300,000 of them, were masterpieces in candid, sometimes even comic, intimacy: Aristotle Onassis attempting to repair his beach car, for instance; or the soprano Maria Callas snorkelling with her poodle on her back. 'You're not a paparazzo,' the Princess of Monaco once said. 'You're a mamarazza.'
She photographed her children — in one, her daughter memorably swigs champagne and
