Chris Jackson’s Modern Majesty reveals the British Royal Family today

Chris Jackson has spent more than 20 years photographing the British royal family, and Modern Majesty shows exactly why his pictures feel current instead of formal. The 240-page hardcover, published by Rizzoli in March 2026 with ISBN 9780847876402, leans on less conventional framing, wider views and long-lens distance to make King Charles III’s court look lived-in rather than staged.

That approach gives the book its strongest visual argument. Rizzoli positions Modern Majesty: The British Royal Family Today as a portrait of a monarchy evolving for the twenty-first century, and the pictures back that up with access to moments that feel immediate: behind-the-scenes scenes from the 2023 coronation, images from Charles’s accession, and day-to-day royal duty across state occasions, charity work, tours and private gatherings. The result is not a pageant of ceremony so much as a visual record of how the royal household now presents itself in public.

For photographers, the lesson sits in the way Jackson uses proximity and restraint. Instead of flattening every frame into formal symmetry, he lets context breathe. Less familiar angles, previously unseen images and quieter transitional moments turn familiar subjects such as Queen Camilla, the Prince of Wales and the Princess of Wales into part of a broader story about timing, access and sequencing. That is where the book’s contemporary feel comes from: not novelty for its own sake, but the decision to photograph the royals as people moving through a changing institution.

Jackson’s career gives that decision weight. Rizzoli describes him as Getty Images’ multi-award-winning royal photographer, while Hardie Grant Publishing says he has held a singular position for nearly two decades as Getty Images’ most trusted lens on the monarchy. He has also traveled to more than 100 countries with the royal family, a scale of access that has shaped the visual archive behind the book.

Modern Majesty is Jackson’s fourth royal title, following Modern Monarchy in 2018, Elizabeth II: A Queen for Our Time in 2021 and Charles III and his Queen in 2023. Taken together, the series charts the shift from Queen Elizabeth II’s reign to Charles III’s era, with this latest volume giving that transition a sharper, more contemporary photographic language.