PDN Legends Online: David Bailey

I'd like you to start with the ol' "in the beginning..."—with how you were an East End boy... with how your Dad was a tailor... your Mom a machinist.

Collins Music Hall,
Islington, London, April 1962
© David Bailey

(1 of 20)

DAVID BAILEY: Okay. Well it all started in London's East End, where I was born on the street next to Alfred Hitchcock's. I guess I'm the last of the Cockneys. Now the East End is mostly Indian or Pakistani, but then it was a mixture of Church of England and Jewish. I was dyslexic, so I was put in the silly class at school. I was at the top of the silly class, though, which... well, I guess it's better to be at the top of the silly class than at the bottom of the clever class. Anyway, I was brought up during the War, so from the age of, I don't know, three to seven I spent every evening down in an air-raid shelter waiting for Hitler to try and kill me.

What was life like then? Did you have a sense of being poor? Of living on the "wrong" side of the tracks? Did you have a sense of "I'll never get anywhere?" Of "I don't have a chance?"

BAILEY: Being dyslexic, I was told that I was an idiot all the time, but I knew I was smarter than the teacher so I was sort of arrogant. When you're dyslexic it pushes you into doing things like painting and photography. Or bird-watching: At one point I wanted to be an ornithologist.

Was there any kind of culture—as we think of culture?

BAILEY: No, the only cultural input was Hollywood. My whole cultural influence is really Hollywood—old Hollywood, '40s Hollywood. We'd go to the cinema seven times a week; it was cheaper than staying home because you didn't have to put money into the gas machine that kept the fires going in the house. I think when I was around 12 my heroes were Fred Astaire, John Huston, and an ornithologist named James Fisher. I thought Fred Astaire was the most glamorous thing in the world. And I thought John Huston was like a white hunter.

What happened after school was out?

BAILEY: I had sort of discovered chemistry and photography when I was 10 or 11. I had my mother's Brownie and I used to process the film down in the cellar. So I had an early interest in photography. But it was mainly a technical thing: I loved mixing up chemicals. Then I used to paint and draw. That's the only thing I was ever top in at school. I had lots of jobs—you know, a kind of John Steinbeck syndrome. I was a carpet salesman, a shoe salesman, a window-dresser, a copyboy for the Yorkshire Post, a runner for 20th Century Fox. And when I was 17 I was a bad-debt collector. That was tough.

You once referred to seeing a picture of a Picasso as a pivotal moment....

BAILEY: Yes, it changed my life. I always painted because it was the only thing I could do. I saw some paintings by Picasso of Dora Maar and it was like getting religion. Suddenly my whole vision changed. What Picasso showed me in an instant was there are no rules. Discovering Picasso opened up a whole network of things. Then I played trumpet—rather badly—because I wanted to be Chet Baker, and I saw these wonderful record covers of Baker and all these West Coast jazz musicians that were done by William Claxton. And that re-sparked my interest in photography. But the picture that probably inspired me the most was that famous Cartier-Bresson photograph, "Kashmir, 1948, Muslim Woman Praying at Dawn in Srinigar." So when I was 16 I started mucking around with cameras more seriously. Then I was caught by the British government, and they put me in the Air Force. I went to Singapore for two years—'56 to '58. I still played the trumpet, but I lent my trumpet to an officer and a gentleman who never gave it back. As a private, I had no comeback. But Singapore was a tax-free port and when you bought a packet of cigarettes they'd throw in a camera practically for free. So I got a camera.

Do you remember how much you were paid?

BAILEY: It was 24 shillings, which would be about two dollars a week.

What did you do in the Air Force?

BAILEY: I was a parachutist, believe it or not. I volunteered for jungle rescue because then I got excused... didn't have to do anything. I could just sit in my hut on the runway and paint and read. I read about five books a week. I read everything—Tolstoy, Dostoevsky,... all of the Russians.

And then, after Singapore, you came home to London?

BAILEY: I wrote to every photographer in London I thought wasn't bad, and it happened that the two most famous ones of that period both replied, both offered me a job. One was John French; the other one was Tony Armstrong-Jones [Lord Snowdon].