LORD OF THE LENS.

Byline: - Rob Lowman

Being an English lord didn't stop him from wanting his ``pictures to make ordinary people react to seeing something that they hadn't taken in before.'' Lord Snowdon (born Tony Armstrong-Jones) has managed to surprise us for nearly 50 years, and some of his best photographs have been collected in a handsome new volume. Among Snowdon's subjects are Glenda Jackson, Emma Thompson, Alec Guinness, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Fiennes, the British royal family, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev. Yet you are more likely to notice an expression, a pose, a setting or simply a feeling before you realize who the famous subject is. Though Snowdon worked for fashion magazines such as Vogue, his photos aren't about glamour. He took his camera to the streets, and his photos of those less fortunate reflect real anguish. ``Photographs by Snowdon'' (Abrams Books; $75) was published to accompany a major exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, in New Haven, Conn. The book includes commentary by associates and colleagues of Snowdon, including actor-author Simon Callow, who writes of the photographer, ``Performers and performances (are) caught in the act, their impulses made flesh as Snowdon's shutter unerringly blinked, pinning them down as certainly as any lepidopterist's pin.''

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(1 -- 2) ``Photographs by Snowdon,'' left, features such images as ``Get With It,'' above, and makes an excellent gift for the holidays.