David Bailey

In 1965, portrait and fashion photographer David Bailey released his groundbreaking book Box Of Pin-Ups, securing him as the hip tastemaker for 1960s London cool. With Mick Jagger his best man at his wedding to Catherine Deneuve, Bailey was also the inspiration for the classic movie Blow-Up. From the Swinging ’60s to the present day, Bailey has never stopped pushing the boundaries of his signature in-your-face portraiture that gets right to the soul of his subjects.

This XL book, previously available as a limited edition SUMO, is the culmination of an incredible career, and the result of two years’ worth of research into his personal archives. Through penetrating pictures of the beautiful and the notorious, the idolized and the powerful, friends and family, writers, artists, and fellow photographers, Bailey presents a sweeping cultural history of the last 60 years, decade by decade. Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Kate Moss, Nelson Mandela, Francis Bacon, Zaha Hadid, the Rolling Stones, Jack Nicholson, Bob Dylan, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Margaret Thatcher, and hundreds more subjects are exposed to Bailey’s uniquely penetrating gaze.

As his friend Damien Hirst writes in the foreword: “He’s the master of his art and he’s created a mind-blowing visual language.” Additional text includes a three-part essay on Bailey’s portraiture by noted photography critic Francis Hodgson. David Bailey is the definitive record of one of the great postwar photographers and Britian’s most famous living artist.