David Bailey article

[broxi]

Article in today's Times about fashion/portrait photographer David Bailey.
I'm a photographer so found it interesting (although Bailey isn't one of my favourite photographers) I'm sure a few others will too...

David Bailey is fed up with fashion photography. “D’you know,” he rages, “any model over the age of 23 has to be touched up these days. Twenty-three? It’s fucking ridiculous but that’s what you have to do for American Vogue and it’s getting to be the same over here.”
British fashion photography has lost its edge, he reckons. “They want shoots that look like a shop window in Knightsbridge. They always have the same kind of dead-looking girls. It isn’t interesting and the girls aren’t interesting. Because they aren’t girls. They’re androids. Airbrushed and cleaned up and not real. And you can’t tell any more who took the photographs. You used to be able to tell; there was character to the pictures. You could tell this was a [Helmut] Newton or that was a Beaton or a Horst or whatever. A Bailey woman has a distinct look. A Bailey woman is a real woman of flesh and blood and sex.”

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/l...cle6802180.ece

[alexora]

David has recently spent a night going around London, taking pictures of normal, ordinary people with his cellphone: pretty cool if you ask me!

[broxi]

David has recently spent a night going around London, taking pictures of normal, ordinary people with his cellphone: pretty cool if you ask me!

Only because it's part of the Nokia advertising campaign...££££££££ !
http://aliveatnight.co.uk/story

[alexora]

Originally Posted by broxi

Only because it's part of the Nokia advertising campaign...££££££££ !
http://aliveatnight.co.uk/story

Of course, but he would have never took the assignment on if phone-cams had not reached the image quality that he would feel confortable associating his name with.
I use a high end digital camera, but do not carry it with me all the time: what I do carry is my cellphone, and I have to say that some of the images produced with its camera are of excellent quality.

Phone cams are the ultimate excercise in photographic democracy: we all have one, carry it with us at all times, and this results in a demistifying excercise in image producing equality.

It's not about expensive kit available only to professionals, but a device that is equal for most, and only leaves space to creativity to express itself.

[broxi]

Phone cams are the ultimate excercise in photographic democracy: we all have one, carry it with us at all times, and this results in a demistifying excercise in image producing equality.
It's not about expensive kit available only to professionals, but a device that is equal for most, and only leaves space to creativity to express itself.

Creativity is one thing but just because a phone or camera provides a certain level of image quality doesn't make you a photographer...I can teach you how to get a sharp, perfectly exposed image but I can't teach how to be creative.
Look at the work of Ellen Von Unwerth, much of her work was shot on a compact film camera, blurred,out of focus and grainy as hell.
As far as Bailey is concerned he's doing it for the money just as he did when he was involved with the Olympus OM campaigns in the 80s/90s...it pays the bills.

[alexora]

Originally Posted by broxi

Creativity is one thing but just because a phone or camera provides a certain level of image quality doesn't make you a photographer...

That was exactly the point I was trying to make: having a photographer like David Bailey producing good images with a cellphone should be seen as a way of spurring the masses into taking more than snapshots, since they now have the "means of production".

[broxi]

The old Olympus adverts were pretty funny...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=i_Yo3FRPeQw

[broxi]

Channel 4 news interview about alive at night images...

http://channel4.com/news/article...traits/3322502