David Bailey's street life
David Bailey has captured the sights and faces of King’s Cross in a new book. Here, he shares his haunting portraits and reveals how one man and his dog changed how he saw North London’s dispossessed Of all the people I have wanted to photograph, two men haunt me, for different reasons. The first was an old ex-army man who lay dying in Mother Teresa's hospice in Sixties Calcutta. I did not take his picture; I did not talk to him. I feared his situation, dying with nobody in his life except the nuns. How would I approach him? Should I pay for his fare back to the UK? He was beyond that, so I took the coward's way out and avoided him. Who was he? A hero in the army, or a deserter maybe? I will never know but he has never left me. The second was a homeless guy and his dog in King's Cross. I was photographing the homeless for The Big Issue magazine. He oozed charm, with the most wonderful smile. His dog seemed to smile too. He changed my attitude to the pictures of homelessness I had been shooting, the people somehow adopted a happier attitude. The homeless person can laugh and smile so that's the direction I took. The guy with the dog set the tone. At least half of the people photographed wanted to live on the streets and claimed to love the freedom. The other half had problems with mental health or drugs. About a quarter had been well educated - one was a mathematician, another had studied philosophy. Two weeks after the shoot I had a phone call informing me the guy with the smile had been murdered. I tried to find out what happened to his dog. Nobody seemed to know. Life moves on, but his smile is still with us. When I moved to King's Cross in the early Nineties, it was the same as after the Second World War - just like pictures I took in the Sixties of the East End. Today, I pass a new building and try to remember what was there before. In a Proustian way, my mission is to record the fading memories of a building - it does not have to be of any architectural importance. A building's face is like a human face. It takes a beating from a long life and that's enough to make the image. No fancy angles, no waiting for the light to be right. Keep it simple. The subject is the hero, not the photography. Everything you want is already there. The King's Cross and King's Cross Street People slipcase, £225, Heni Publishing, is out now, available to buy at henipublishing.com
© David Bailey1/10"This is a great example of how bicycle shops have changed in the last 20 years," says David Bailey, 1999
© David Bailey2/10A vintage photo in the window of a car-hire office, 1999
© David Bailey3/10This man may have been "up from the country," says Bailey, 1998
© David Bailey4/10"He seemed not to have a care in the world. I'm sure that wasn't true," 1998
© David Bailey5/10"The owners of this garage made their street number very clear," 1999
© David Bailey6/10"He told me he was a philosopher," says Bailey. "I didn't doubt him. He had the looks," 1998
© David Bailey7/10"He looked like a film star," says Bailey. "He could have been a character in On The Waterfront," in 1998
© David Bailey8/10"The six people in shot look like they were placed for composition," says Bailey, 1999
© David Bailey9/10Gas holders beside the canal is "a scene you'll never see again in King's Cross"
© David Bailey10/10This photograph was taken in 1998. Two weeks later, the subject was murdered. "Life moves on," Bailey says, "but his smile is still with us"
