Stardust: David Bailey’s celebrities, self-portraits, and other subjects | CNN
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Stardust: David Bailey’s celebrities, self-portraits, and other subjects
David Bailey's new book, Tears & Tears, released this September, revisits some of his most famous portraits, but presents the unseen, half-formed story behind...
The book contains the legendary photographer's test strips: previously unseen pieces torn off the unexposed photographic paper as Bailey experimented to find the correct exposure timings
The photographer has re-fixed and washed the tests to preserve the "stains" and "accidents" that the unpredictable process creates, presenting the "unique" new results as vague images with unclear edges, and mottled colors emerging from the black and white images.
Self-portrait during National Service in Singapore, 1957 —
Bailey, pictured here in self-portrait that forms part of am exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery, has captured many of the worlds most famous actors, musicians, and celebrities in a long career stretching back to the early 1960s.
Bailey's Stardust, the largest exhibition Bailey has created to date contains works form David Bailey's Box of Pin-Ups, a portfolio created in 1965, which included images of cultural figures early in their careers, such as John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and David Hockney.
Bailey made his name as a fashion photographer, after he was hired by British Vogue as a freelancer in 1960. He has the last half-centuries' most famous supermodels, from Jean Shrimpton -- once Bailey's girlfriend and favored subject -- to Kate Moss.
Bailey has maintained friendships with many other important artists over his long career including fellow photographers Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy in the 1960s and contemporary star Damien Hirst, who he collaborated with in a joint exhibition in 2004.
Among musicians, his best loved images are arguably of The Rolling Stones -- he created numerous classic album and single covers for the band -- although countless stars, from the 1960s to the present day have sat for him.
Bailey's became a celebrity in his own right in the 60s, and was known to the London's biggest stars. Today, his wife laughs at the suggestion of Bailey having a famous social circle. "You don't really socialise do you? You have your good friends, but you might not see them for ten years."
Bailey met the model Catherine Dyer in 1983 and they married three years later. Over the 30-year relationship, the two have created countless images together, including a selection of portraits published in 1995, called The Lady is a Tramp.
Stardust, originially seen at London's National Portrait Gallery in summer 2014, is not limited to Bailey's celebrity subjects -- also depicting his work in London's historically poor East End, and from around the world.
In 2012 Bailey went on "the toughest trip" he'd ever been on: to the Northeast Indian state of Nagaland, where he depicted the conflict between local elders who maintained a traditional way of life, and a younger generation, looking for change.
Earlier in his career. Bailey traveled to Papua New Guinea and make portraits of local tribespeople. "In '74 I photographed the cannibals in New Guinea," he has said. "They treated me OK but they didn't make you feel relaxed."
Many of Bailey's most celebrated images were taken in the East End of London, where he grew up in the aftermath of the Second World War, portraying people in pubs, clubs, and cafes, as well as the gangster twins Reggie and Ronnie Kray.
Bailey says taking a great image is the same whether the subject is a famed artist or an electrician: "I just talk to them on their level. Talk to them like they're a normal human being. I treat everyone the same."
