Final Research Project: David Bailey
Personal Background
David Bailey was born in Leytonstone, East London on January 2, 1937. He suffered from dyslexia, which caused him to have problems in school. On his 15th birthday he left school to become a copy boy for the Yorkshire Post. After working this and a series of other odd jobs, he was called up to serve for the Royal Air Force in Singapore in 1957. After this he bought a Rolleiflex camera in order to better nourish his creative talent. He then worked a few photography-related jobs before being hired as a photographer for Vogue in 1960.
Style
David Bailey has a very simplistic style. He shoots in almost entirely black and white with plain white or grey backgrounds. He compensates for his lack of color by dressing up his subjects stylishly in mostly black and white clothing and using dramatic lighting on their faces. He uses strong compositional techniques, usually preferring to put his subjects’ faces front and center. This makes his work very distinctive and easily recognizable.
Philosophy
David Bailey’s photos captured the essence of his subjects’ personalities. Or at least, their personalities as we think of them. In keeping with this theme of intimacy, Bailey didn’t choose his subjects based on whether or not they were celebrities. Bailey once said, “Anyway, when they say I did celebrities in the ‘60s they’re wrong. I did talent who happened to be celebrities.”
Influence
David Bailey has influenced my work in a stylistic sense. I was already a fan of black and white in films, like in David Lynch’s Eraserhead and Kevin Smith’s Clerks, and I had already been using black and white in certain Instagram photos, but I had never really considered it the way Bailey did it. In the ‘60s, a time when color was practically a universally used element in all forms of art, David Bailey came in and reintroduced the world to stark black and white. It makes me think about how it can be used to draw attention to the contrast between light and shadow. After seeing how effectively Bailey uses it, I plan to do black and white photography more often.
The Photos
Jude Law
I took this photo in front of a wall in my basement. In order to recreate the look in terms of clothing I borrowed a black jacket and black tie from my dad. I also cut a plastic straw and put it in my mouth to look like a cigarette and did my best to style my hair somewhat similarly to how Jude Law did. In terms of composition I leaned forward to get the same sort of angle, framed it similarly, and put myself square in the center of the photo. Finally, in terms of lighting I turned up the brightness and exposure very slightly and also increased the contrast in order to give it the classic black and white aesthetic.
Michael Caine
For this picture I used almost the same clothing as last time, only I ditched the fake cigarette and put on a pair of old 3-D glasses from the movie theater (lenses removed). I chose these because I thought they looked very similar to the glasses Michael Caine wore in the picture. I used the same lighting techniques as in the last photo, keeping the classic look of a guy in black against a plain white background. I tried to make a similar facial expression as Caine did. I also leaned back and tilted my chin up slightly to make myself look similar to how he did.
Johnny Depp
One considerable difference between my photo and Bailey’s picture of Johnny Depp is that I don’t have as much facial hair as he does, my hair is blonde and not black, and my jawline is different. So I obviously don’t look exactly like Johnny Depp. I went down to my basement and shot in the same location as in the previous two photos (it makes a good replacement for a white seamless), and used that as my background. As in the previous pictures, I positioned myself at a similar angle to the subject, made a similar facial expression and dressed as he did. I also paid close attention to lighting to make the shadows prominent, like they were in the original.
All 3 Photos
When picking photos to recreate I tried to choose ones that I felt some personal connection to. For example, I already had a liking for Michael Caine from the Dark Knight films, Johnny Depp from his work with Tim Burton (especially Sweeney Todd) and I just thought that picture of Jude Law looked really cool. For the most part I shot in the same location and tried to dress like the subjects. This included props like straws as cigarettes and 3-D glasses as regular glasses. I also tried to make the white background look as white as possible while also making the clothes look as black as possible in order to retain the strong contrast in shades that made David Bailey’s original photography so evocative and visually interesting.
Sources
Images
http://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/alfie-revisited-7227727.html
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw58428/Michael-Caine
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/david-bailey-johnny-depp
http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw58428/Michael-Caine
https://www.artsy.net/artwork/david-bailey-johnny-depp
Information
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1390510.stm
http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/34108/1/catching-up-with-the-ultimate-enfant-terrible-david-bailey
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/england/london/articles/David-Bailey-the-photographer-on-life-London-and-celebrity/
http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/34108/1/catching-up-with-the-ultimate-enfant-terrible-david-bailey
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/england/london/articles/David-Bailey-the-photographer-on-life-London-and-celebrity/