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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life." ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Photographer Profile ~ David Bailey

David Bailey, born in 1938 in London's East End, says that as a youth he had very limited choices in the job market. "You could become a boxer, a car thief, or maybe a musician."

David Bailey Photographer wasn't on the list and seemed an even dimmer possibility after Bailey's failed early efforts to take snapshots with the family's Brownie camera. Instead, he pretty much did anything and everything else to make money: carpet salesman, tallyman, shoe salesman, window-dresser. . . . It was only after being posted to Singapore while in the British Royal Air Force in 1956 that Bailey started getting more immersed in the field of photography. He discovered the work of Henri Cartier Bresson, which greatly inspired him, and started voraciously poring through copies of LIFE and various American photo journals. In 1957 he bought his first camera. "I was smitten, and gradually the prospect of becoming a photographer became less remote, perhaps even attainable."

In 1959 he became an assistant to fashion photographer John French in London. In 1960, at 22, he was already working as a freelancer for British Vogue, and soon became almost as famous as the people he was photographing: fashion designer Mary Quant, and everyone who was involved in Bazaar, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, The Who, singers Marianne Faithfull and Sandie Shaw, actresses Mia Farrow, Catherine Deneuve and Geraldine Chaplin, actors Peter Sellers and Michael Caine, and models Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy and Penelope Tree. Bailey also photographed the period's current fashions on the streets of London and New York for magazines like American Vogue and Glamour. "I wanted to be like Fred Astaire, but I couldn«t, so instead I went for the next best thing, which was to be a fashion photographer."

via PDN

Bailey directing model on set


                                                                              Andy Warhol

Artist David Hockney

Jean Shrimpton
                                                                            Jean Shrimpton

                                                                        Jean Shrimpton

                                                                        Jean Shrimpton


                                                          Roman Polanski with Sharon Tate

Natalie Imbruglia

 Abbey Lee Kershaw

                                             Abbey Lee Kershaw i-D Magazine 2010 see more here

                                                                    Abbey Lee Kershaw



Angie Hill & Catherine Bailey, 1986



Michael Caine

Mick

John Lennon and Yoko


The Movie Blow-Up and Austin Powers were inspired by David Bailey's persona.






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