'Jillian Edelstein is telling me her Harry Styles story. It is the last of the many stories I’ll hear from her today. I’ve already heard others about Nelson Mandela and apartheid South Africa, about Ukraine and El Salvador and Kosovo and the West Bank. Some of them heart-breaking, some of them scarifying.
It’s possible, though, that the Harry Styles story is the only one that doesn’t involve a photograph.
It goes like this. Out swimming at her local pool on Hampstead Heath recently, she dropped her ring under a tree. She couldn’t reach it. But help was at hand.
“Suddenly this man shot from behind me, threw himself down to the ground, shoved his hand down and picked it up. Guess who? It was Harry Styles.”
Four days later Edelstein was out for a coffee on her birthday with her daughter. A man walked up to her and said “We can’t go on meeting like this.” You can probably guess who.
“And that’s when I killed it,” Edelstein adds. Because that’s when she asked if she could take Style's photograph. “Can you imagine how many people ask?” '
Jillian Edelstein, esteemed press photographer, interviewed by The Herald Scotland, 27 July 2026
