David Bailey

David Bailey, born in 1938 in London's East End, says that as a youth he had very limited
David Bailey choices in the job market. "You could become a boxer, a car thief, or maybe a musician."

Photographer wasn't on the list and seemed an even dimmer possibility after Bailey's failed early efforts to take snapshots with the family's Brownie camera. Instead, he pretty much did anything and everything else to make money: carpet salesman, tallyman, shoe salesman, window-dresser. . . . It was only after being posted to Singapore while in the British Royal Air Force in 1956 that Bailey started getting more immersed in the field of photography. He discovered the work of Henri Cartier Bresson, which greatly inspired him, and started voraciously poring through copies of LIFE and various American photo journals. In 1957 he bought his first camera. "I was smitten, and gradually the prospect of becoming a photographer became less remote, perhaps even attainable."

All told, Bailey has written and produced countless books, directed films, arranged photographic shows and made commercials. His book Goodbye Baby and Amen is the complete record of his work and captures the decade he first flourished in, with portraits of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, as well as actresses, politicians, artists and writers of the day. His first book of portraits, David Bailey's Box of Pin-ups, was published in 1965. David Bailey's Rock and Roll Heroes, 1997, showcases more than 80 of his most vivid images of the pop scene from the 1960s on - images of Mick Jagger, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and The Who - and also includes more recent photographs of recording artists like Seal, Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Sting, and Dave Stewart. Two noteworthy films are Beaton by Bailey, 1971, and Andy Warhol, 1973. In 1984 there was a major retrospective of his work at Manhattan's International Center of Photography, and in 1999 another major show, "The Birth of the Cool," at London's Barbican Centre.

David Bailey, Archive One 1957-1969, published in 1999, includes the bulk of his early fashion and portraiture work, but also unearths some photojournalistic gems taken in the early Sixties, mostly of London's East End. Today, Bailey's still going strong and shows no signs of slowing down. His most recent work includes portraits and celebrity shoots for Harper's Bazaar, Italian Vogue, The London Times and Talk magazine, among other publications.