--------------------- [excerpt from Jerry Hall: My life in pictures -- Quadrille, 2010] -------------------------
David Bailey: A Lifelong Friend
David Bailey is the most wonderful photographer to work with.
We have had so many good times, producing such glorious photographs together.
His sharp, pared down, tightly cropped and gritty monochrome images transform his sitters into heroic figures.
He gave me a shot he had taken of Bob Dylan which is one of my favourite photographs of all time. And I have always loved the photos he has taken of me.
One of the things I love most about Bailey is his integrity. If he doesn't feel inspired by a job, he turns it down -- no matter how much money is on offer.
Bailey has dyslexia and, while not always adept at articulating his thoughts verbally, he is a visual genius. He left school at 15 and learned his art by becoming a photographer's assistant, and by his early twenties he was taking pictures for Vogue.
Because he works so instinctively, clients have to trust him and let him do his job -- and he always produces stunning photographs....
One of the most memorable shoots Bailey and I did together was for French Vogue, in the south of France. We went with the great artist and photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue, who was then in his late eighties.
Lartigue had been famous in his youth for his images of the privileged world of France at the turn of the century.
His photographs of horse drawn carriages, early automobiles and glamorous women and their friends had really captured an era.
He had been re-discovered in his seventies in New York and had started working for Vogue. When I met him he was an adorable smiling, white haired gentleman who took snaps of me while Bailey photographed us both. Later I called his wife begging for one of those photos, but she told me that sadly they hadn't come out well. I'd have loved to have seen them.
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment