Thread by @dean_frey

Happy birthday David Bailey 🎂
Photographing Moyra Swan, in a photo by Terry O'Neill, 1965
"What I do isn’t work – bricklaying is work."

On David Bailey's birthday, my favourite portraits.
John & Paul, 1965

A David Bailey contact sheet from his John & Paul photoshoot

Laurence Olivier by David Bailey, 1987
"I thought: 'How am I going to deal with this man?' But he drank two bottles of champagne and his nurse had to help him up the stairs. He was completely unpretentious and a very nice bloke."

David Bailey
Jean Shrimpton, Vogue, November 1963
"I didn’t try and do fashion pictures. I tried to do portraits of girls wearing dresses."

David Bailey
Catherine Deneuve, Vogue, November 15, 1966
"You can’t really copy what I do because I don’t do anything. My style is nothing."

Mia Farrow by David Bailey, 1967
"David is an enormous talent. Is he as good as Avedon? No. Is he better than Leibovitz? Yes. So I give him the benefit of the doubt."
- Wendy Cromwell

The Kray Twins by David Bailey, 1965
"The Krays were a bit like Tolstoy’s Cossacks. Fucking anarchists, but with their own morality. They didn’t do prostitutes or drugs. I quite liked Reg, even though when he was 19 he slashed my father’s face with a razor."

Dudley Moore & Jean Shrimpton by David Bailey
Vogue, June 1965

Mick Jagger by David Bailey
December 1964
@NPGLondon

Bill Brandt by David Bailey, 1982
@NPGLondon
Bailey's portraits can sometimes seem superficial, but this intense picture of the great photographer is very moving. This is Karsh territory.

Salvador Dali with, & by, David Bailey, 1972

David Bailey photographs Catherine Deneuve
📷 Patrice Habans for Paris Match, August 1965
The two were married from 1965-1972.

David Bailey by Patrick Lichfield
April 1969
"You have some fun in the studio, & the picture ends up in the National Portrait Gallery!"
@NPGLondon

Almost forgot my favourite David Bailey portrait: John Lennon, 1965