Rare and unseen David Bailey photos from his early days shooting 1960s London are a vintage visual treat
Classic David Bailey images shot in London on show at the Leica Gallery and available to buy! The post Rare and unseen David Bailey photos from his early days shooting 1960s London are a vintage visual treat appeared first on Amateur Photographer .
David Bailey, a prominent figure in British photography, was born in Leytonstone, Essex in 1938 and later moved to East Ham in London. His early years were marked by challenges, including dyslexia, which led him to leave school at 15. Bailey began his career as a copy boy for the Yorkshire Post before being called up for national service in the RAF in Singapore in 1957. After his demobilization in 1958, he decided to pursue photography and invested in a Canon rangefinder camera, having previously owned a Rolleiflex.
Bailey's big break came in 1960 when he was contracted by Vogue magazine, just a year after becoming a photographic assistant at the John French studio and after joining John Cole’s Studio Five. His association with Vogue allowed him to shoot numerous covers for the iconic fashion magazine, with some sources claiming he produced 800 pages of photographs in a single year. Bailey's talent and energy were renowned, earning him the nickname "the king lion on the Savannah" from model Penelope Tree.
The Time After Time exhibition, currently running at the Leica Gallery London, showcases 22 of Bailey's early images from his time in London. The exhibition, which will run until January 2026, aims to highlight the rawer, less polished side of Bailey's early work compared to his more polished later pieces. Included in the exhibition are photographs of model Jean Shrimpton, with whom Bailey had a professional and personal relationship from 1960 to 1964.
Despite their relationship's ups and downs, Bailey was highly complimentary of Shrimpton, praising her natural talent and the way the camera seemed to "love" her.
Bailey's career has spanned decades, with his work extending beyond photography to include commercial shoots and musicians, such as the cover of the 1973 Rolling Stones album Goat's Head Soup. In the 1990s, he also penned regular columns for Amateur Photographer. The Time After Time exhibition at the Leica Gallery London features prints of Bailey's most iconic early works, some even printed by Bailey himself, and offers them for sale starting at £10,000 (plus VAT).
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