David Bailey’s five decades of fashion, celebrity and notoriety

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A 'combination of talent, good timing and fortune' enabled David Bailey to take the shots that captured an era. Ian Jones reports

David Bailey's portrait photographs have charted over five decades of fashion, celebrity and sometimes notoriety.  He is now seen as one of the most recognizable and distinctive photographers, whose reputation is worldwide.  Bailey has photographed actors, musicians, fashion icons and models, artists and designers, filmmakers and even other photographers.  Many are famous, some are unknown, but all the images are recognizable as the work of David Bailey.  

David Bailey’s style is typified by his portraits of expressive subjects shot against a plain white background.  Mick Jagger, Michael Caine, Kate Moss, Grace Jones, Tom Ford and the notorious gangsters, the Kray twins, have all been photographed in this way.  

 ‘Stardust’ is the largest exhibition of his work so far and is spread over 12 gallery rooms at the National Portrait Gallery in London.  It contains over 300 original prints of portraits and other personal projects that Bailey has undertaken since picking up a camera to take his first-ever photograph, a portrait of his parents and sisters, which is included in this show.  All the portraits in this show have been personally selected by Bailey and the exhibition is structured thematically rather than historically.  Taking a thematic approach allows for some interesting juxtapositions, the photographs of Jean Shrimpton (1974) and Kate Moss (2013) are separated by a period of nearly 40 years and yet both images have the same Bailey style.  

One of the Gallery rooms is dedicated to his wife, the model Catherine Bailey.  It features several fashion shots as well as intimate family portraits, including Catherine photographed by David Bailey during childbirth.  The largest Gallery room, the Wolfson Gallery, contains all the photographs in his famous ‘Box of Pin-Ups’ portfolio.  This collection of prints, presented at the time in a box, features images of contemporary cultural figures from the fashion, pop and art worlds.  Many were friends and fellow members of the Ad Lib Club, a fashionable 1960s members-only club in central London.  This room also features display cases of original publications, record covers, books and posters that feature his photographs. 

Although the exhibition shows a great deal of his work it does not show how he works.  Except for one contact sheet and a caption explaining why he limited the number of exposures shot in a particular sitting, there is no insight into his methods of work. 

It is easy to make comparisons between Bailey’s projects in ‘Stardust’ because so much of his work is on show. Inevitably there will be some that disappoint, such as ‘Democracy’, photographs of people who responded to his open invitation to be photographed naked in his studio, and ‘Skulls’, still-life compositions of skulls and flowers.  His East End social documentary photographs featuring a rare use of colour photography are, however, exceptional. 

More comparisons between his colour and monochrome work can be made in the Fashion Icons and Beauty room, which shows black-and-white images of the singer Grace Jones, the model Kate Moss, the fashion designer Tom Ford and the 1960s model Penelope Tree, alongside colour photographs of ex-wife and model Marie Helvin, model Jerry Hall and his recent colour photographs of the artist Grayson Perry, s  as well as the journalist and novelist Molly Parkin and the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes.   Background music by Rod Stewart plays in this room, but its significance it not explained. 

Despite the fact that his photography for Vogue magazine in the 1960s made him famous, David Bailey does not see himself as a fashion photographer.  He reflects that he did not enjoy or excel at school, partly because he was dyslexic.  He recognizes that his influence and inspiration for creating photographs came from a childhood spent watching black-and-white films, especially the stylistically lit film noir.  Perhaps his success is due to the combination of talent, good timing and fortune.  Mick Jagger and David Bailey became good friends when Jagger dated the model Jean Shrimpton and Bailey was living with her sister.  Jagger invited Bailey to photograph the Rolling Stones’ tour and gave him rare backstage access; commissions for album covers followed.  The series of candid portraits is included in the Rolling Stones Gallery room.