David Bailey - Time After Time

To many, David Bailey is associated with the monumental people and faces he has photographed over a 60-year period, but perhaps not so many are familiar with his analysis of the London streets and places so deeply personal to him - pavements walked countless times through a lifetime well lived.

London is part of Bailey's DNA - the city's canvas holds within it, subjects, which seem to have provoked his curiosity without fail since he was a child. Whilst he was becoming familiar with the corridors of Vogue he continued to photograph streets with the fading figures who had survived the austerity of the 1950s or worn facades of aristocratic buildings given reverence with his lens. 

The show at Leica Gallery London is born of this part of Bailey, images that portray London at the heart of him and the rawness of Bailey's photographic beginnings before he became one of the most known cultural figures of our time. On the heels of learning the trade in both John French's Studio and John Cole's Studio Five his risky images of models in urban situations began to wake up the blue-chip magazine pages - these photographs brought flesh, blood and a sultry fresh abandonment which overtook the clinched mannequin-type look of the 1950s.

Bailey's relationship with his London roots is the starting point for the exhibition, however, the show is also hinged around other deep seated personal collaborations. Throughout the show we see the very beginnings of what we now view as legendary partnerships - for example Jean Shrimpton, shot in 1964 on Tower Bridge, styled casually in Bailey's army jacket would go on to become one of the most successful models of her era. Looking at images like these we glimpse the formation of Bailey's unwavering career - a photographer who has never stopped being in demand to this day.

Willingly with Bailey we walk through a different time in London viewing a city that would become for the lucky few the most vibrant place to be during the 1960s, the models who's faces would stand the test of time and the acknowledgement that there was still hardship at every turn.