IMAGES ©DAVID BAILEY

Salvador Dali and David Bailey, 1972

ICONO
GRAPHER
GRAPHER David Bailey is laughing. It’s
his trademark: more than a
giggle but less than a guf-
faw, an infectious wheeze
that punctuates his Cockney-
accented, joke-filled chatter.
“I was photographing the
SIX DECADES INTO HIS GLAMOROUS CAREER,
DAVID BAILEY IS STILL AMUSED
Queen of Jordan. What’s her
name?” he shouts across his BY ROBERT KIENER
London studio to his assistant,
Hannah.
“Princess Rania,” she re-
minds him.
“Rania, yeah, that’s it. Beau-
tiful woman. It was about 10

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Jack Nicholson
 David Albarn, 2007

years ago and I was photographing her for Vanity Fair. I was
in the palace and there was a break so I began wandering
around the place. A man, a little guy, came up to me and
said, ‘Well, you have a busy day, don’t you?’ Then he held
out his hand and said, ‘I am the king.’’’
Before he can get to the punch line, Bailey breaks into
a hearty, mischievous laugh. His brown eyes sparkle, and
he’s nearly doubled over on the studio couch. He can’t
help himself; he knows what’s coming.
“As he stuck out his hand to shake mine, I laughed and
said to him, ‘No one’s ever said that to me before!’ The
king laughed, too. Thank God!”

STAR-STUDDED, DOWN TO EARTH

The story is classic Bailey. It’s funny, whimsical, and
self-deprecating. Incidentally, no one calls him “David
Bailey” or, God forbid, “Mr. Bailey.”
“I’m just Bailey,” he says as he welcomes me into his
studio, a former London mews house (stables) built in
1780. He laughs as he says, “But you can call me whatever
you want.”
Like many of the celebrities Bailey has photographed
over the past six decades (his earlest works captured 1960s
Swinging London), the 76-year-old has become world-
famous. He was the inspiration for the movie “Blow Up;”
Queen Elizabeth honored him with a CBE; and he’s often
cited as “the best photographer in the world.” His recent
one-man retrospective at London’s National Portrait Gal-

“I’m beginning to feel a bit tired now and then.

But I’m not getting old; I’m wearing out.
There’s a difference, you know. I’ll never be an old fart.”
lery, “Bailey’s Stardust,” featured more than 250 of his iconic
photographs and drew rave reviews and huge crowds.
Flipping through Bailey’s lifetime of work is like
journeying through a photographic Who’s Who of the
late 20th and early 21st centuries. There are instant-
ly recognizable portraits of everybody who was—and
is—anybody, from Jean Shrimpton and Mick Jagger to
Mother Theresa and Jack Nicholson. It’s thrilling, if a bit
exhausting, to sample this massive portfolio of brilliant
photography, and it’s no wonder that Bailey confesses,
“I’m beginning to feel a bit tired now and then. But I’m
not getting old; I’m wearing out.” He laughs and adds,
“There’s a difference, you know. I’ll never be an old fart.”
While he used to photograph every day, he now captures
a few portraits a week. “There’s not enough time in a day
to do everything I want to do,” he says. He sculpts, makes
short films, and paints.
When I ask him what it’s like for a photographer to be
described as an artist, as he often is, he stops me and
says, “Am I an artist? That’s a difficult one, isn’t it? I’m
Human Skull with Blue Roses

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 Rio Club, 1968

not sure what art means anyway. It’s a bit like love. Who
knows what it is?” He pauses for a moment then adds,
“It’s all in the past, anyway. It’s the moment that counts.
It’s the only thing we’ve got in life.”
No one’s made a glittering a career of capturing these
“moments” quite like Bailey has. So it’s somewhat surpris-
ing when he says, “I’m not interested in glamour. I’m inter-
ested in people and whatever you see in the photograph.
Whatever-you-want-to-call-it is already in that person. I
can’t put it there, but I can find it and bring it out. It’s the
moment, and nothing captures a moment like a camera.”
He brings no preconceived ideas to a portrait session.
“Never. I never know what I want before I go in. Never!
If I did know, I might as well have someone else shoot
the picture.” He confesses having a short temper with art
directors who’ve asked him to shoot in a certain style or
achieve a certain look. “I tell them to do it themselves.
Why are you coming to me?”
He also insists on a private set and has no patience for
celebrities who show up with a gaggle of hangers-on. “I
don’t want anyone to interfere with me,” he says. He ad-
mits he cancelled a lucrative assignment to photograph
pop icon Lady Gaga. “There were so many rumors about
her storming out of photo sessions and being silly. I couldn’t

BON MOTS ACCORDING TO DAVID BAILEY

“If something becomes old-fashioned, it was no good to start with.
Think about it. Michelangelo is not old-fashioned.”
“Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who
they are. You do’t know if you’re getting a character from a Chekhov play or
a Polanski film. It depends what mood they’re in.”

“Rockers are the nicest people to photograph. They have no inhibitions.”

“I love people for giving me their time. It’s a privilege; I make the most of it.”
“It always amazes me when people ask you to do something
and then tell you how to do it.”
“I like laughing. That’s the story of my life, really.
It’s been a bit of a laugh.”
Mick Jagger, 1973

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 Tom Ford

be bothered.” The fewer people a celebrity brings along,

he explains, the more interesting he or she usually is.
“Johnny Depp came alone; he was great.”

MORE TALK, LESS SHOOTING

“I don’t take pictures. I make pictures,” says Bailey. “A
five-year-old can take a picture, but there’s an art to mak-
ing a picture.” A typical session consists of an hour of talk
and 10 minutes of photographing. “That’s one reason I
prefer using a large-format plate camera,” he explains. “I
can talk to the person while I’m working instead of hav-
ing to bend down and have my eye glued to the camera.”
When asked if he has any special techniques to get a
response from people, he bristles: “I don’t do tricks. I just
talk.” Although he left school at age 15 he’s well read and will
leaven his conversation with a quote from anyone from Aris-
totle to Alan Bennett. “I usually find I have something to
talk about with almost everyone I photograph,” he explains.

Catherine Bailey

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 Jean Shrimpton

He’s famously said that he has to “fall in love with my

subjects to fully capture them.” He explains, “You have to
give them all your attention for as long as it takes, whether
it’s 10 minutes or three.”
Although he’s decades removed from his East End
beautiful-young-man days, Bailey still oozes charm. As
we talk in his whitewashed London studio, surrounded
by the flotsam and jetsam of his artistic life and listening
to Ella Fitzgerald’s “Someone To Watch Over Me” in the
background, he turns the tables on me.
Touching me lightly on the arm, he asks, “How old are
you?” Then, “Where have you been based as a journalist?
Do you like the Brits?” He’s at once inquisitive, charming,
and disarmingly funny. Like a director framing a shot,
he makes a square with both his hands and holds it up to
my face. “You look a lot like Gore Vidal. Right there; that
part of your face,” he tells me. Then, after breaking into
an impish cackle, he adds, “Sorry, mate.”
He confesses he’s a people watcher. “The minute some-
one comes in that door, I’m already photographing them.
I note their personality, their mood, I watch the way they
move, what side of their face they prefer, everything.”
Because his process demands time and access, he fre-
quently turns down projects. “I won’t do a job if they only
offer me a few minutes,” he explains. For years he’d been
asked to photograph Queen Elizabeth but always declined
the offer. “They would never give me more than five minutes,”
he says. “You can’t get to know anyone in just five minutes.”
When he was again asked to shoot a portrait of the
Queen in honor of her 88th birthday in 2014, he demanded
a half-day session with her, three changes of clothes, and
no crown. “If she wore a crown my picture would look like
one of those silly pictures that everyone takes of her,” he says.
He got everything he asked for except the clothes. She brought
only two changes—a cocktail dress and day clothes. No crown.
“I don’t take In the portrait, which has been highly praised by the
press and already acquired by the National Portrait Gallery,
pictures. the queen wears a simple white dress, strands of pearls,
I make pictures. and an uncharacteristically large smile.
Bailey picks up a print of the portrait in his studio and
A five-year-old says, “I’ve always been a huge fan of hers. She’s a strong
can take a woman and I like strong women. And do you see the mis-
chievous glint in her eyes?”
picture, but What did he say to her to get that expression?
He laughs gently and says, “Can’t tell you, mate. Any-
there’s an art thing you say to the Queen has to remain off the record.”
to making a I kid him and ask, “Can’t you make something up?”
“Anything I made up wouldn’t be as good as what we
picture.” talked about!” he says, just before breaking into a cack-
le that broadens into a full-throated belly laugh. Once
again, Bailey is laughing. •

visualartists.co/artist/davidbailey

Robert Kiener is a writer based in Vermont.

Papua New Guinea, 1974

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