“I’m not really good at telling stories. I do it with my work,” the British photographer David Bailey said about 10 minutes into a conversation in which he had already told quite a few stories. He did have a point, though. He’s not much of a talker, more prone to quips and plain descriptions than a full recounting of events.
This is the most clear when he’s talking about his relationship with one of his closest friends, the artist Damien Hirst. How did they meet? “I used to direct a lot of commercials and live-action films. I had an office, and Damien just came in and sat in my office, and we became friends from there.”
In the foreword to Bailey’s new book, David Bailey, out this week from art publisher Taschen, Hirst remembers the story a little differently. He writes, “The first time I met Bailey he said to me: ‘I was at a dinner the other night and some people were slagging you off’. I said ‘Yeah?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, they were saying you weren’t fit to live with pigs, but I jumped in and put them right. I told them you were.’”
That Hirst took this in stride and remembers it fondly says a lot about why the two wry and wily artists are bedfellows. “Damien has got a great sense of humor,” Bailey said. “If you’ve got a sense of humor, you’ve got the edge.”
This mix of reserve, bawdy humor and friendly joviality marks so much of the portraiture collected in this new volume, which will be released in a 20-inch-by-28-inch, 66-pound SUMO edition of 3,000. The new book was his publisher’s idea, Bailey said, but combing through his archives to select the right photographs took about three or four years. Any organizing principle behind the selections? “I chose the pictures because they’re good pictures,” he said.
Bailey is not only a portrait photographer—his nearly six-decade-long career has seen him release 46 books and dabble in everything from narrative film to international photojournalism—but his photographs of the figures changing British society in the boisterous 1960s made him a celebrity in his own right. After his first shoot for British Vogue in 1960 at the age of 22, he was a fixture in magazines and in a swinging social set. Because of that, he’s shot almost any celebrity you can imagine, from Salvador Dalí to a young Serena Williams.
Photographing someone like Andy Warhol or Queen Elizabeth, whose images were already iconic before he set up his camera, could have been a challenge, but Bailey said he wasn’t daunted. “I suppose it’s easier because they’re not so nervous,” he said. Capitalizing on the moments where these figures begin to let their guard down is a hallmark of Bailey’s work. He caught the Queen in a little smirk, and got a new image of Warhol when they took selfies lying in a bed.
He likes to build a rapport with his subjects before they start a shoot. “I usually talk to people for an hour before I photograph them, or for as long as I can,” he said. “I don’t know how you can take a picture when you don’t know who you’re photographing.” But he won’t divulge any secrets from their conversations, he said, because he wants to keep them private.
When doing magazine work to go along with a profile, Bailey said he never consults with the journalists or editors to direct his process. “I do what I want,” he said. “If they say they don’t like it, they’ve got the wrong photographer. I’m not a puppy dog.”
He claims to have no favorite images or subjects—"I haven’t had any favorites since I was five. They were sherbet and lemon, and there isn’t any sherbet and lemon in this book,” he said—but there are some subjects he keeps coming back to. He’s photographed Mick Jagger many times over the decades, captured Jean Shrimpton in an array of outfits in the 1960s, and the book is nearly bookended by portraits of Catherine Deneuve, (who was his wife from 1965 to 1972), one from 1966 and the other from 2009.
Though he has included one particularly enchanting snapshot of Margaret Thatcher in this collection, it’s clear from flipping through the pages that Bailey is most comfortable photographing creative types, especially the midcentury iconoclasts that he also hung out with. “They collaborate with Bailey, rather than merely sit with him,” writes art critic Francis Hodgson in the essay that accompanies the book. “These are his tribe, the people he understands, the people who demonstrate that image Bailey helped popularize of self-made nonconforming successes.”
One of this book’s biggest surprises might be the tender photographs of his wife, Catherine, and children Fenton, Paloma, and Sascha woven seamlessly into the final two sections. Some of the photos are casual, like an outdoor scene where everyone’s hair is tousled, and others are more composed, formal portraits. He claims his focus on them is merely procedural. “Well, they’re just more available,” he said. But when he turns his eye on them, his gaze is soft and tender, and their faces brim with emotion in turn. It puts the penetrating, open stares he elicits from his subjects into context—through the constructed space of a photo shoot, he is skilled at forming a bond.
Now, all three of his children have undertaken artistic careers. “It’s natural for them,” he said. He understands why, though he claims he did not teach them any of his craft. “The only thing I taught them is how to play chess. I thought that if they can play chess, they can manage life.”
Maybe it’s an accident of history: the advent of youth culture and the rise of the fashion magazine marking the beginning of his career. Maybe it’s something a bit more subtle about him—he seems to enjoy the secret relationships he builds with his subjects in a mere hour. But whatever the reason, taking pictures of people has been the animating force of Bailey’s creative and personal life.
And is he happy about that life? “Well, I have no choice. That’s the way it is.”
This article has been updated.
— Cover story: Nicole Kidman reflects on her career, marriage, faith, and texting with Meryl Streep
— The Mueller report as a spy novel
— The women of Jane—a radical underground abortion network—speak out
— The joy of Supreme Court members trying not to say “FUCT”
— Melinda Gates on why she still believes “data is sexy”
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily newsletter and never miss a story.
