You are here:About>Hobbies & Games>Photography> World Photography> Europe> Britain> David Bailey and Fashion Photography
About.comPhotography

FREE Newsletter

David Bailey and Fashion Photography
Swinging the sixties
 Related Resources
• World Photo Guide
• Fashion links
• Fashion with Attitude
• Sixties Style
• Notable Photographers
 
 Elsewhere on the Web
• David Bailey - PDN
• Avedon - PDN
 

"David Bailey!" kids used to scream at me across the street as I wandered camera in hand through London's run-down East End. Bailey was photography to the man and woman in the street; a media star and also a local boy made good.

Bailey helped make London's Swinging Sixties and they made him. The Beatles, the Stones, Marianne Faithful and all were stamped into our memories by his lens, together with those first supermodels, Shrimpton, Twiggy and those less desirable East End characters, gangland's Kray brothers.

Bailey, Terry Donovan and Duffy together made the terrible three of UK photography in the sixties, injecting a shot of street-wise working-class energy into the sometimes precious world of fashion photography. Bailey's upfront 'in your face' high-contrast portraits, although showing his indebtedness to Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, set a trend which still dominates editorial portraiture, their tight cropping breaking many of the established 'rules' and designed to defy editors to find any way to further crop his work.

London in 1999 had a major show of Bailey's work at the City's leading Barbican Art Gallery, still touring worldwide as the ''Birth of the Cool', and of Donovan's at the Museum of London. In the same year a new book, David Bailey: Archive One 1957-79 written by Martin Harrison was added to the dozen or so previous volumes of his pictures. Bailey is often thought of simply as the model for the high living, fast driving, promiscuous photographer of the film Blow Up. It's actually worth getting to know his pictures better.

WEB LINKS

BAILEY

David Bailey
Biography, gallery of 20 fine pictures (click to enlarge), interview and video from PDN Legends Online.

Bailey's Sixties on show
Short text and video from the BBC. "It (fashion photography) was better than living in East Ham".

Young Meteors
Exhibition of UK photography from the 1960s at the UK National Museum of Photography, Film and Television.

David Bailey/Birth of the Cool : 1957-1969
Review of the book.

Hamilton's Gallery: David Bailey
Silver and platinum prints.

AVEDON

Richard Avedon web site
Information on and articles by Avedon, but only a couple of pictures on the front page.

Richard Avedon - Fraenkel Gallery
Represents Avedon - 5 pictures (one a triptych) on line.

Avedon - German article
Article in German with 4 illustrations

Avedon - PDN/Kodak Legends on Line
Superb view of the book 'Avedon The Sixties' with around 20 pages on line and related information.

Avedon - Max Kozloff
3 page article by on Avedon - worth reading. Illustrated by 3 Avedon pictures which caused the publisher to order the book to be withdrawn following objections from Avedon's lawyer. Kozloff claimed a defence of 'fair use' under which the illustrations are included in the article.

Avedon -Neil Selkirk
Wired article on Avedon by photographer Neil Selkirk - no illustrations.

Books by Avedon
Long list of links to books and other publications.

See a full listing of other features from About Photography on the history, theory and applications of photography and on great photographers.

Why not start or join in a discussion on this feature on the photography forum?




Subscribe to the Newsletter
Name
Email


From Peter Marshall,
Your Guide to Photography.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

Newsletters & RSSEmail to a friendAdd to del.icio.us
  All Topics | Email Article | |
Advertising Info | News & Events | Work at About | SiteMap | Reprints | Help Our Story | Be a Guide
User Agreement | Ethics Policy | Patent Info. | Privacy Policy ©2006 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.