After having been fashion photographer, John French’s, assistant, David Bailey begins the 1960s with a contract with Vogue and rapidly becomes a leading figure of the Swinging London scene, chronicling the unrestricted existences of models and musicians.
Although he admits being fascinated by the Renaissance art and the painter, Caravaggio, the British photographer favors minimalist, mostly black and white frontal depictions of his sitters. With images that clearly evoke the sex, drugs and rock n’roll spirit of the decade, David Bailey also finds women he loved in his celebrity pack, from model Jean Shrimpton to Catherine Deneuve but also Anjelica Huston and Penelope Tree.
The photographer continues to mischievously capture contemporary figures such as Kate Moss who has become an illustrious successor of the Swinging Sixties, always revealing a certain kind of eccentricity in them, even when he portrays the Queen Elisabeth II whom we have so rarely seen smile so frankly.
(Photos by David Bailey)
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