A biography for David Baileyhasn’t been written yet.
“I didn't try and do fashion pictures. I tried to do portraits of girls wearing dresses.”
“If something becomes old-fashioned, it was no good to start with. Think about it. Michelangelo is not old-fashioned.”
“I don't think my work does reflect my nationality - I don't like the idea of nationalism.”
“The skull is nature's sculpture.”
“I just thought it was magic that you could stick a bit of paper in some coffee-type liquid and a picture comes out.”
“Being handsome wasn't much of a burden. It worked for me.”
“Sometimes I still can't believe my luck.”
“When I die I want to go to Vogue.”
“In New York, everyone's desperate for success, desperate for money and desperate to be accepted, but in London they're more laid back about things like that.”
“I love learning new techniques.”
“I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.”
“I could develop a picture by the time I was 12.”
“My first influence obviously was Picasso.”
“I'm not a philosopher, I'm just a simple boy from East Ham.”
“I always go for simplicity.”
“All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.”
“I'm never shocked, I'm not the shockable type!”
“I've been used by women all my life, fortunately.”
“Anybody can be a great photographer if they zoom in enough on what they love.”
“I suppose because my work was so popular people didn't really look at it.”