Who Are You, David Bailey? Thursday July 13, 2006
Interesting TV programme on David Bailey a few days ago. It was part of a UK History series on the 1960s rather than photography but it wasn’t citing 1960s culture very much, and Bailey was the principal subject.
Twenty years ago I used to like Bailey, then felt he was superficial and populist, and now I like him again. It’s true he was and still is associated with Olympus advertising campaigns (“who are you, David Bailey?”), but he knew photography. I especially like his trademark white background portraits, and some of his fashion and nude work. In addition to knowing photography he also knew how to seduce women, apparently, and the line between his work and personal life was sometimes blurred, as with Marie Helvin and even more famously with Catherine Deneuve and Jean “the shrimp” Shrimpton – all of them very beautiful, captured perfectly in Bailey’s lens. He was a cheeky chappy from the East End; you can still see that quality in him in his currently advanced age and it’s easy to imagine how that translates into a flirtatious banter.
The 1960s were a great time for photography, with a unique and unrepeatable sense of adventure and artistic daring. Rules were broken, formal stiffness was replaced with fun and graphic compositions, and photography was establishing itself as a powerfully creative medium. Cartier-Bresson and others had already impressed the world with their artistry – and influenced people like Bailey – but it was probably in the 60s when photography was discovered as a mainstream tool for magazines and advertising. Campaigns such as Benetton used a few years ago, depicting emaciated African people, could arguably be traced back to the work of Bailey and his contemporaries. In particular: their photographs blended fashion, the exotica of the ‘other’, and a social message conveyed in shocking imagery. The same qualities can be seen in famous 1960s photography, albeit with a different kind of subject-related shock. For example, with the iconic portrait of Christine Keeler, the work of Bailey’s contemporary Lewis Morley:
It was also the era when people like David Puttnam, Alan Parker and the Saatchis were doing similarly groundbreaking work in advertising. They linked products with psychological desires rather than the straightforward marketing of previous decades, revolutionising marketing strategy with conscious mass manipulation, consistent with the ideas of Edward Bernays. And here’s the lovely Shrimpton, by Bailey:
I particularly enjoy these cheeky chappy remarks, which you can find over here – Bailey took his work seriously, but not himself:
BAILEY: Penelope was more than Twiggy. Twiggy was like the Monkees, the Beatles. Penelope kind of started all that “Flower Power.” And she wore the shortest miniskirts I’ve ever seen.
Wasn’t she aristocratic?
BAILEY: Yes, and she was a real rebel. But I didn’t do such great pictures of Penelope. Somehow I couldn’t. Avedon did great pictures of Penelope—really great pictures. But I guess Penelope’s still my best friend, along with my wife and a couple of guys. I see her at least once a month.
How did you meet her?
BAILEY: Vogue called me up and said, “We’re photographing this very aristocratic girl called Penelope Tree, and we don’t want any of your nonsense.” What a stupid thing to say. It was like a red rag to a bull. If they hadn’t said anything, I might not have noticed. But because they said it I thought, “My God, now I’m really interested.”
BAILEY: I’m 62, I think. My age and waist seem to go together.
Everything still operational?
BAILEY: Everything’s working great. I don’t need Viagra, thank you. But if I did I’d certainly take it.
What do you think your contribution has been?
BAILEY: I’ve made a lot of women very happy.
Your photographic contribution.
BAILEY: Oh. I think I helped lighten things up. I had to fight some barriers that photographers now don’t have to fight with magazines.