David Bailey

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

– David Bailey

David Bailey (1938) is a British photographer and director known for his advertising, celebrity, and fashion photographs.

David Bailey, whose career in photography would eventually bring him into contact with the high reaches of British society, came from a working-class East London background. Educated in London, he left school at a young age, worked at a series of menial jobs, and served with the Royal Air Force in Malaysia in 1957–58. Having been interested from his youth in painting and photography, in 1959 he apprenticed at the John French Studio, where he became involved in fashion photography. In 1960 he began to photograph for British Vogue, where he worked for about 15 years, first on staff and later as a freelancer. He also freelanced for other magazines and newspapers.

Bailey’s fashion work and celebrity portraiture, characterized by stark backgrounds and dramatic lighting effects, transformed British fashion and celebrity photography from chic but reserved stylization to something more youthful and direct. His work reflects the 1960s British cultural trend of breaking down antiquated and rigid class barriers by injecting a working-class or “punk” look into both clothing and artistic products. Bailey himself became a celebrity who epitomized “swinging London”; he was known for his affairs with several celebrated women, among them the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Catherine Deneuve, whom he married in 1965 (divorced 1972). He is thought to have inspired the role of the photographer, Thomas, in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-up (1966).

Bailey also directed television commercials and produced a number of books and documentary films. In 1972 he began publishing the fashion and photography magazine Ritz. Although he continued to photograph celebrities for publications such as Harper’s Bazaar and The London Times throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, he began to turn his attention to television commercials. During this time he directed several feature films, including The Intruder (1999).

His documentary subjects included Cecil Beaton, Andy Warhol, and Luciano Visconti. Books of his photographs included Box of Pin-ups (1964), Goodbye Baby & Amen: A Sarabande for the Sixties (1969), Another Image: Papua New Guinea (1975), David Bailey’s Trouble and Strife (1980), David Bailey, London NWI: Urban Landscapes (1982), Imagine (1985), David Bailey’s Rock and Roll Heroes (1997), and David Bailey: Chasing Rainbows (2001). David Bailey: Bailey Exposed (2014) features observations by Bailey, interviews with a number of his subjects, and photographs. He has created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001.

Published on February 5, 2021
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