Photographer: David Bailey
Date of Photographers Life: (1938 - Present)
1. Personal Background: David Bailey was born January 2 1938, in Leytonstone East London. His Father, Herbert Bailey was a tailor's cutter, and his wife, Sharon, a machinist. From the age of three he lived in East Ham, London. Suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia, he experienced problems at school and dropped out at 15. He raced through a series of dead end jobs, before his call up for National Service in 1956, serving with the Royal Air Force in Singapore. He was discharged in August 1958, and after using a Rolleiflex camera in the Royal Air Force, was determined to pursue a career in photography. In 1959, Bailey became a photographic assistant at the John French studio, and in May 1960, he was a photographer for John Cole's Studio Five, before being contracted as a fashion photographer for British Vogue magazine later that year. He also undertook a large amount of freelance work.
2. Style: Bailey was famous for his use of stark black and white backgrounds, closely cropped shots and sharp lighting lead to a new era of fashion photography. This new style epitomized the changing London cultural scene. When working with subjects he would watch the subjects body language, such as the way his subjects used their hands, the little attributes they hadn't even noticed themselves. Instead of just taking pictures he would spend more than half of his time learning from his subjects.
3. Philosophy: In the 1960's he was quoted as saying “it was the first time the working classes had a mass voice and lots of people were doing really interesting things". He took that to heart and even when he was getting almost as famous as the people he was shooting he would always stray from the path and do creative things instead of being a sell out. One notable example would be in 1973 when he photographed the cannibals in New Guinea or when he photographed the foremost perpetrators of organized crime in the East End of London during the 1950s and 1960s. With their gang, known as the Krays.
4. Influence: I was able to find connections between Bailey's work and mine. In the past I had experimented with close up portraits with a white background. Making them black and white added a completely other layer that made the images "deeper". I'm not the only one who has been influenced by David Bailey. He inspired photographer, Thomas, in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film "Blow-up" (1966) and inspired many more with his well constructed photographs.
Sources:
http://famous-photographers.com/david-bailey/
http://photoindex.net/david-bailey/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Bailey
Date of Photographers Life: (1938 - Present)
1. Personal Background: David Bailey was born January 2 1938, in Leytonstone East London. His Father, Herbert Bailey was a tailor's cutter, and his wife, Sharon, a machinist. From the age of three he lived in East Ham, London. Suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia, he experienced problems at school and dropped out at 15. He raced through a series of dead end jobs, before his call up for National Service in 1956, serving with the Royal Air Force in Singapore. He was discharged in August 1958, and after using a Rolleiflex camera in the Royal Air Force, was determined to pursue a career in photography. In 1959, Bailey became a photographic assistant at the John French studio, and in May 1960, he was a photographer for John Cole's Studio Five, before being contracted as a fashion photographer for British Vogue magazine later that year. He also undertook a large amount of freelance work.
2. Style: Bailey was famous for his use of stark black and white backgrounds, closely cropped shots and sharp lighting lead to a new era of fashion photography. This new style epitomized the changing London cultural scene. When working with subjects he would watch the subjects body language, such as the way his subjects used their hands, the little attributes they hadn't even noticed themselves. Instead of just taking pictures he would spend more than half of his time learning from his subjects.
3. Philosophy: In the 1960's he was quoted as saying “it was the first time the working classes had a mass voice and lots of people were doing really interesting things". He took that to heart and even when he was getting almost as famous as the people he was shooting he would always stray from the path and do creative things instead of being a sell out. One notable example would be in 1973 when he photographed the cannibals in New Guinea or when he photographed the foremost perpetrators of organized crime in the East End of London during the 1950s and 1960s. With their gang, known as the Krays.
4. Influence: I was able to find connections between Bailey's work and mine. In the past I had experimented with close up portraits with a white background. Making them black and white added a completely other layer that made the images "deeper". I'm not the only one who has been influenced by David Bailey. He inspired photographer, Thomas, in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film "Blow-up" (1966) and inspired many more with his well constructed photographs.
Sources:
http://famous-photographers.com/david-bailey/
http://photoindex.net/david-bailey/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Bailey
This is a photo of the Kray Brothers. The two of them are mobsters which I found very cool and surprising that they agreed to do this photo. In my replication I ingeniously used myself for both brothers instead of dealing with my actual brother. I was able to put myself in the image twice by taking two photos and cutting one of them out and pasting it to the other. My complaint about these comparisons is that I wasn't able to space my two subjects accurately to the Kray Brothers because my shoulders are to big in the photo.
Image Bank - Portraiture of Jude Law by David Bailey,
This is a portrait photo of Jude Law. Jude Law is an English actor who has received nominations for two Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two British Academy Awards. I like this photo because it is simplistic and elegant. One issue I have with my comparison, is the background. In other images my background was decently similar but for this photo my background is too dark and I'm not posed completely right.
Lennon and McCartney by David Bailey, January 1965
This is a photo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. As most likely already known, these two people were part of The Beatles, which is praised as one of the best and influential bands in the world. When comparing the original photo with mine, I am very happy with the end result. A few things are off like the background and head position, but overall is matches pretty well.
Box Of Pin Ups by David Bailey
London, 1965 (printed and published)
London, 1965 (printed and published)
This picture was published as 'David Bailey's box of pin-ups' in 1965 as a loose portfolio which consisted of 36 portraits of the mainly-male fashionable elite. The portraits constitute a celebration of the growing celebrity culture of the Sixties, and many of them have become the definitive images of key figures of cultural life in London during the Swinging Sixties. This is probably the most boring photo out of the rest because I don't know the subject of the portrait and his pose is sub-par.
1965, David Bailey, Paul McCartney.
My last photo is of Paul McCartney. The reason I chose this picture is because of the pose. Even though it's pretty basic, it is still very powerful looking. When looking at the photos I have lined up my body almost perfectly to Paul McCartney and the backgrounds look nearly identical which I'm very proud of. This would probably be my second favorite comparison due to the most similarities.
Personal Artist Statement: I shot all 5 photos the same way. I got my camera out of its case, I took my tripod out of my closet, I went in my bedroom and put on my suit, I found a room with the whitest looking wall which happened to be the study, I placed the tripod on my desk and began shooting. Capturing and editing the photos was really fun. Once they were all taken I edited each one and when putting the black and white filters on them, it really put it all together. After finishing this project I learned that even if there is no color in these photos, there is a lot of meaning of what you can do without it.