David Bailey Quotes & Sayings

#1. All I could do at school was paint and draw and that was the only time I ever passed any exam. It was the only thing I ever got right at school.

David Bailey

#2. I could develop a picture by the time I was 12.

David Bailey

#3. I don't really like the term 'artist.' I'm not sure what it means. It's a bit like 'love.'

David Bailey

#4. Nothing wrong with retouching - nothing new about retouching.

David Bailey

#5. The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.

David Bailey

#6. In New York, everyone's desperate for success, desperate for money and desperate to be accepted, but in London they're more laid back about things like that.

David Bailey

#7. I'm not political and I don't judge.

David Bailey

#8. I did painting before I did photography.

David Bailey

#9. It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

David Bailey

#10. I didn't know I was going to live for 50 years. It has come as a shock.

David Bailey

#11. I always go for simplicity.

David Bailey

#12. Botticelli would have made a very good fashion photographer. He did eight heads instead of seven heads in a body, which is fashion illustration.

David Bailey

#13. I love learning new techniques.

David Bailey

#14. Everyone gets old - there's nothing you can do about it.

David Bailey

#15. A positive attitude can really make dreams come true - it did for me.

David Bailey

#16. If I have any sexist feelings they are aimed at men: I hate manly men.

David Bailey

#17. In France they don't think I'm difficult.

David Bailey

#18. If something becomes old-fashioned, it was no good to start with. Think about it. Michelangelo is not old-fashioned.

David Bailey

#19. If you're curious, London's an amazing place.

David Bailey

#20. I never tried to revolutionise photography; I just do what I do and keep my fingers crossed that people will like it.

David Bailey

#21. The trouble with people like Tony Blair is they get confused, they think intelligence is education when they're two different things.

David Bailey

#22. The skull is nature's sculpture.

David Bailey

#23. Being trendy is dangerous. I've never been trendy, which is why I've never really fallen out of favour.

David Bailey

#24. Kate Moss is the best thing since Jean Shrimpton, really.

David Bailey

#25. Rockers are the nicest people to photograph. They have no inhibitions.

David Bailey

#26. My paintings are rubbish.

David Bailey

#27. My exploits are nothing now to the average person.

David Bailey

#28. I guess I'm the last of the Cockneys.

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#29. I don't think global warming is to do with us, I think it's a natural circle. I don't think a few Ferraris make that much difference.

David Bailey

#30. There's nothing wrong with being a fashion photographer, but it's a bit limited.

David Bailey

#31. Being dyslexic, I was told that I was an idiot all the time.

David Bailey

#32. I hate being so nostalgic about the Sixties.

David Bailey

#33. I don't think it matters where I came from any more.

David Bailey

#34. It is a sign of a dull nature to occupy oneself deeply in matters that concern the body; for instance, to be over much occupied about exercise, about eating and drinking, about easing oneself, about sexual intercourse.

David Bailey

#35. I'm not a philosopher, I'm just a simple boy from East Ham.

David Bailey

#36. Instead of putting someone in prison for being a hooligan, give him a choice. He may have beaten someone up and he's got eight years, but tell him you can do eight years inside or spend five years in the Army. Put him in the Parachute Regiment, they'd soon sort him out.

David Bailey

#37. In a way, a man's body is more beautiful than a woman's.

David Bailey

#38. I suppose because my work was so popular people didn't really look at it.

David Bailey

#39. In '73 I photographed the cannibals in New Guinea. They treated me OK but they didn't make you feel relaxed ... I managed to escape unscathed though, I'm pretty good at that.

David Bailey

#40. I'm not really one for regrets.

David Bailey

#41. People want security in this insecure world.

David Bailey

#42. I have never met an ugly woman.

David Bailey

#43. The only thing approaching art in a movie is the script.

David Bailey

#44. You can't really copy what I do because I don't do anything.

David Bailey

#45. Sometimes I still can't believe my luck.

David Bailey

#46. To get rich, you have to be making money while you're asleep.

David Bailey

#47. It's only a few nutcases who do art for themselves, like Van Gogh.

David Bailey

#48. I just thought it was magic that you could stick a bit of paper in some coffee-type liquid and a picture comes out.

David Bailey

#49. My first influence obviously was Picasso.

David Bailey

#50. I don't like any sport except boxing and bull fighting.

David Bailey

#51. Fortunately I didn't get educated because if I'd got educated I'd be an educated fool now.

David Bailey

#52. London changes because of money. It's real estate. If they can build some offices or expensive apartments they will, it's money that changes everything in a city.

David Bailey

#53. Photography is more about money now but then so are most things.

David Bailey

#54. I never set out to be a photographer.

David Bailey

#55. Rather than knowing more, I think I've got more open-minded.

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#56. I don't see the point of photographing trees or rocks because they're there and anyone can photograph them if they're prepared to hang around and wait for the light.

David Bailey

#57. Being handsome wasn't much of a burden. It worked for me.

David Bailey

#58. My friends are all megalomaniacs - from Damien Hirst to Jack Nicholson - all of them.

David Bailey

#59. Good shoes are important. I wear English brogues in a wide fitting. They last me years.

David Bailey

#60. I don't feel very optimistic in London.

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#61. I have always wanted to live in the present and never the past.

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#62. The earth has a life of its own.

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#63. You adapt to who you're photographing.

David Bailey

#64. I like change. There's something Buddhist about it - continuous change is wonderful.

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#65. I left school on my 15th birthday.

David Bailey

#66. I am not responsible for all the journalists in the past that have told lies.

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#67. I am mad about my wife.

David Bailey

#68. You have to kind of be invisible when you photograph children, so you use a longer lens.

David Bailey

#69. All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.

David Bailey

#70. The reason I did fashion was it was the only way to get paid to do anything creative. You couldn't support yourself as an 'artist' - I hate that word. The only way you could be 'arty' was as a fashion photographer, because it still had a certain amount of integrity involved.

David Bailey

#71. I hate men who are in touch with their feminine side.

David Bailey

#72. The Sixties was a time of breaking down class barriers, although I think class still exists today in some areas.

David Bailey

#73. I don't do proud.

David Bailey

#74. When I die I want to go to Vogue.

David Bailey

#75. When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.

David Bailey

#76. I've had some weird experiences.

David Bailey

#77. I'm an image-maker.

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#78. I've always been a bit flip.

David Bailey

#79. All my ex-girlfriends or wives are all kind of great friends and I've never understood somebody who can live with somebody for five or six years and then not like them.

David Bailey

#80. Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.

David Bailey

#81. I don't think my work does reflect my nationality - I don't like the idea of nationalism.

David Bailey

#82. I always look at people and think how I would cast them.

David Bailey

#83. I won't do advertising if they bring a layout and say, 'This is what we want to do,' because anybody can do that; it's not interesting. They've got digital and the computer; it's not taking pictures, it's not magic - it's a picture done by committee.

David Bailey

#84. It always amazes me when people ask you to do something and then tell you how to do it.

David Bailey

#85. My father was a tailor, my mother a machinist.

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#86. I didn't try and do fashion pictures. I tried to do portraits of girls wearing dresses.

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#87. Journalists never make it clear when you are joking.

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#88. I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

David Bailey

#89. I was surrounded by strong women so it had never even occurred to me that women were anything other than equal to men.

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#90. The only thing they can't teach you at art school is art.

David Bailey

#91. I've been used by women all my life, fortunately.

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#92. I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked.

David Bailey

#93. I've never been anti-women.

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#94. I was ten when I got my first serious beating. It was rough.

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#95. I think about death all the time. I know there's nothing out there, but I'm curious. There's a 300 billion-to-one chance that there might be an energy that goes somewhere else, but I doubt it.

David Bailey