On September 28, 2023, the Fabey/Klein Gallery celebrated the opening of David Bailey‘s solo exhibition. Not to worry if you missed it, as the show runs through November 11, 2023.
Fahey/Klein David Bailey
BAILEY: Photographs includes some of Bailey’s signature images of luminaries of fashion, music, and also fine art. In portraits and little-known “torn” prints, he captures subjects including Jane Birkin, Michael Caine, David Hockney, Helmut Newton, Jean Shrimpton, and Mick Jagger.
Bailey’s bold and iconoclastic style has made him one of the world’s most renowned living portrait photographers. Therefore earning him as much fame as his subjects. He discarded the rigid rules of a previous generation of portrait and fashion photographers. He also channeled as well as immortalized the energies of London in the 1960s and beyond. Self-taught, his distinctive style comprises stark white backgrounds, uncompromising crops, and striking, seemingly spontaneous poses. From the beginning of his career, which now spans more than six decades, his arresting yet spare portraits and fashion images have conveyed a radical sense of youth and sexuality, often typifying the look of the times.
About David Bailey
The artist was born in London in 1938. His childhood shaped his early experiences in the East End during the Blitz of WWII. He left school at fifteen and was then conscripted into the Royal Air Force in 1956. Whilst posted in Singapore, he bought his first camera and was inspired to be a photographer after seeing Cartier Bresson’s photograph, ‘Kashmir.’ Bailey started working with fashion photographer John French as his assistant in 1959. He left soon after to strike out his career as a photographer and published his first portrait of Somerset Maugham for ‘Today’ magazine in 1960.
David Bailey, David Hockney, 1965 © David Bailey, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles
Bailey experienced a meteoric rise at British Vogue in the early ’60s. In 1965, he published his first photography book, “Box of Pin-Ups,” featuring media stars like Mick Jagger, The Beatles, and Andy Warhol, among others, as the title suggests. Then Bailey went on to create some of the most memorable and sensual portraits of the last century. The artist has exhibited worldwide. The first of his landmark exhibitions was in 1971 at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Additional Exhibitions
Other exhibitions have also been held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (1983), International Center of Photography, New York (1984), Birth of Cool, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2000), and Bailey’s Stardust, National Portrait Gallery, London (2014), which travelled through 2015 to Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, and Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. Additionally Bailey’s work is held in private as well as public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery in London, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
On view: September 28, 2023 – November 11, 2023
What: BAILEY: Photographs
Where: The Fahey/Klein Gallery, 148 North La Brea Ave., LA 90036
When: September 28, 2023, 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Website: http://www.faheykleingallery.com
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