David Bailey: Tears and Tears

by David Bailey (Photographer)

Determining the perfect exposure time for a photographic print in a traditional darkroom can be a time-consuming and tedious process, and the irreverent David Bailey (born 1938) has never had much patience for it. Normally a photographer makes a number of test strips, each showing different exposure times; but Bailey has always just intuitively torn off strips of the unexposed paper to find the desired "I would usually have it in the bag after three tears." Over the decades, Bailey has kept his "test tears," re-fixing and washing them to preserve the unpredictable and unique qualities of these "accidents." This book contains the best of Bailey's tears, which transform some of his most famous motifs into fascinating abstract pictures through their torn edges and myriad tones.

96 pages, Hardcover

Published January 26, 2016

About the author

David Bailey is one of the most respected photographers in the world. He worked as a fashion photographer for Vogue magazine, but he is also known for his work on the ‘Swinging London’ scene from the 1960s, which gave him celebrity photographer status.

Bailey’s fashion work and celebrity portraiture, characterized by stark backgrounds and dramatic lighting effects, transformed British fashion and celebrity photography from chic but reserved stylization to something more youthful and direct. His work reflects the 1960s British cultural trend of breaking down antiquated and rigid class barriers by injecting a working-class or “punk” look into both clothing and artistic products. Bailey himself became a celebrity who epitomized “swinging London”; he was known for his affairs with several celebrated women, among them the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Catherine Deneuve, whom he married in 1965 (divorced 1972). He is thought to have inspired the role of the photographer, Thomas, in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-up (1966).