1stDibs ExpertJanuary 10, 2025
David Bailey is famous for his work as a photographer. At 15, the London-born David Bailey was jazz-mad and Picasso-loving but, being a dyslexic cockney, was booted out of school. Escape from gritty East London seemed unlikely until he picked up a Rolleiflex during his stint in the National Service. Three years later, in 1960, he was under contract at British Vogue.
Prodigiously talented, Bailey was also wildly charismatic and uncommonly pretty, a high-octane amalgam that no doubt fueled his meteoric rise. Soon, he was chronicling and surfing the cultural tsunami that transformed London in the Swinging Sixties, when young creatives from music, fashion, advertising, theater, film, TV and journalism toppled the British establishment to become the new royalty. This was the moment when the seeds of celebrity culture were sown.
Bailey snapped all these revolutionary artists: John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Michael Caine, Tom Stoppard and David Hockney. Each and every one looks impossibly dewy and fresh and brims with an entirely modern derring-do. So, too, do “the beautiful birds,” as Bailey called the alluring models and actresses who defined that decade: the exquisite Jean “Shrimp” Shrimpton, Twiggy, Penelope Tree, Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve.
Find a diverse assortment of David Bailey art on 1stDibs.
