Headline, Feb19, 2013

'''BRITAIN​'S PHOTOGRAPH​Y COLOSSUS : DAVID BAILEY'''

Cocksure, intransigent, and with a keen sense of what he wanted out of life, he was also an extraordinary photographer. When people talk about Bailey now they seem to take his work for granted, as though it was somehow there before he arrived.
But his original portrait style, the relentlessly copied, close-cropped, black-and-white head shots, and his almost anarchic fashion pictures, which showed a disdain for conventional ''settings'', reinvented 20th century photography.

During the Eighties, when global celebrity culture was in the ascendancy, magazine photographers tended to photograph the type pf people who rebelled against nothing but personal discomfort. The art became one of putting people at ease, of portraying the famous in a flattering light. Naturally the by-product of this flattery was the fact that those who were claimed for posterity in this were identified as celebrities whether they deserved to be or not.

These people began using photographers as advertising photographers, and what they were advertising was themselves. In the Sixties, fame was different. In Goodbye Baby & Amen, Bailey's been there   done-that account of the decade. Peter Evans summed up London's Swinging Set: ''Narcissistic, ruthless, often talented and malignantly ambitious, they were the butterflies born to be broken on the racing wheel of fashion.

Possibly no other society so small in number, has tattooed its image so indelibly across the face of a whole generation. It was the first time of no-deposit, non-returnable disposable fame. The Swinging Sixties Set, however was at the mercy of Bailey's camera. His work of Band Aid involved pictures taken on the Sudanese-Ethiopian border that, in the words of William Golding. ''could keep you awake at night and make you feel as though you will stay awake forever''.

With typical idosyncratic flair, David Bailey has mastered the art to tell the story of his life  -an extraordinary tale of celebrity and the pursuit of perfection. Unlike other photographers, Bailey works all the time: Ah, the boxes, the boxes. Lots of little Mexican-style boxes, little mausoleums of kitsch and caboodle, little temples to death and fertility. Here is Bailey, compartmentalizing his life : a stuffed rabbit, and a sacramental mirror, another has a coffin, a star fish, two painted skulls, and a bowel of roses and another has Barbie dolls.

In one delightful session, he once photographed Prime Minister Gordon Brown. At the end of the session, Brown thanked Bailey, for all he had contributed to the ''class struggle'', for breaking down the Establishment barriers, and making it easier for working class creatives to move up within the industry.

With respectful and fond,  -memory-laden dedication-  to my Principal and great Teacher, Hugh Catchpole Esq, M.A, ( History/Oxon).

He gave his entire life and all his earnings and all his achievements to his students. The cause of Education in both India and Pakistan.

The British Government came short, in truly honoring a great Englishman.

Prime Minister David Cameron must reconsider!!

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless