David Bailey - Photographer HARDtalk

a picture has never been easier for UKIP. Now on BBC News it's time for

Hardtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Steven Sackur. We all take

photographs but very few of us capture images which come to define

a generation. One of those legendary photographers joins me today, David

Bowie. `` Bailey. In the 60s, he captured the vitality, the sexiness

and the rebel spirit of the age in black and white. Over five

successive decades, he has conjured up iconic images of models, rock

stars and even gangsters. But what do his pictures say about him?

David, welcome to HARDtalk. Stephen. It seems like you have been

getting a buzz out of taking pictures from when you were a

teenager to this very day. How do you describe the buzz you get? It is

something I do, I can't help it. I do what I do and I don't know why. I

mean, I don't know why do it, I just do it. I like doing it. I do other

things too. But you are known for your camera work. What intrigues me

is that you came from a background, a working`class family, your dad was

a tailor, where photography, presumably, was not discussed at

home much. And yet, for some reason you were attracted to it. I want to

know why. I guess because I am dyslexic. It was the best thing that

ever happened to me. , second or third, if we want to be precise. I

couldn't do anything else because I am completely uneducated. I left

school at 15. The parting words from the headmaster were not positive. I

could not spell. I was always taking the Mickey out of everything. I

thought of was a bit. `` I thought of was at bit. When you got a camera

in your hands, I know that you spent some time in the army. The Air

Force. Doing some camerawork. Did you ever think, I could make the job

out of this? No I never thought like that. I hate the idea of doing a job

or career. You just do what you do. I have always painted as well. I

still paint. I have got enough enemies in photography though. I

guess it was Hollywood movies. We used to go to the movies maybe... At

least five times a week because it was cheaper to go to the movies. It

was cheaper to go to the movies than to put a shilling in the gas meter

and keep warm. My mum and my sister and I used to go to the movies with

bread and jam sandwiches and orange juice and watch movies. Sometimes,

they always had two movies and they used to loop them. So I became an

expert on movies. And glamorous moving images? Not particularly

glamorous. I liked the film noir ones best. I like the lighting. I

thought they were terrific. You are talking about post`war Britain when

the country was going through austerity. It was fairly dull and

grey. But then, something happened as you became a young man and moved

into your working life, you are at the cusp and maybe a pioneer in

changing photography. You got involved in fashion photography,

magazines and you did it in a way that really had not been done

before. A few other people went in that direction. There is always a

feeling somewhere. You know, there is a feeling for things. You do

something and you think it is original and then you see someone

else has done it. There is this kind of collective unconsciousness or

whatever it is that people seem to move in that direction. Let's look

at an image. One of the famous, fairly early pictures you took. A

picture of a model, it is all about selling the clothes she is wearing

but actually, the image itself and the way you portrayed her cause a

massive stir. What were you thinking? It is bit of a silly

picture. It is almost surreal because the girl is kneeling on the

floor talking to a stuffed squirrel. Which is quite bizarre. LAUGHTER One

of my friends said, did you do that on purpose or was it an accident? I

actually did do it on purpose. But wasn't it Terence Donovan who said

you know what, you have taken a picture there that will change

everything. That is what he said. You've just spoilt my answer. Why do

you think that that was changing the way that fashion photography works?

The whole world thought it. Terry did not, he was pretty smart. That's

all I can say, really. It was actually before the New York being

with Jean. Jean Shrimpton. This model was great, she was from

London. She had a working`class accent, that never went down well

with the magazine. Isn't that the very point? That you shook this

world up. The fashion world, it used to be very formal and demure. The

photographers, and indeed the models, were often quite high`class,

doing it as a useful hobby. You shook this world. The fashion world

was... I don't know how I got into it. Like a pea getting into a pea

can. I had been used to being treated as an idiot at school. You

had a London accent when most people around you were posh. OK, the two

guys that help me most was John French, a photographer. I worked

with him as an assistant. Then I mucked around for a few months, and

he was gay. And they were outsiders, so I was an outsider as well. And

then John Parsons who was the art director of British Vogue at the

time and had drug problems, he was gay too. So I think it was like

those two guys helped me enormously because we were all outsiders in a

strange way. And I thought it was their way of poking back. I don't

know. They are both dead, unfortunately. But those two guys, I

mean I have never been gay. I was a kid at school and there was a

teacher who was always trying to kiss me but you couldn't tell anyone

in those days. The headmaster would not believe you. You told your

mother, she would kill him. Far from being gay, it does strike me that

you said once I think, I never cared much for fashion it, was the girls I

liked. You do seem to have found a way of using your charisma to get

women, both to model for you in a new way but also a lot of the women

were seduced by you in a literal sense. They seduced me too. I don't

know. I want to get to the nature of the relationship. With these women,

who you were photographing, and sometimes turning into stars? Do you

want the truth? OK. The only way you can be vaguely creative and get paid

for it, vaguely get paid, was to do fashion pictures because it was

quite creative. No other type of photography was created under you

wanted to go somewhere and get shot at which I did not fancy. And so, it

was the only way... It was nothing to do with the women. It was that

you could make creative images and get paid for it. Otherwise, you

ended up doing pictures of cars or still lifes of food which did not

interest me. But I think you once said, and this is something that

strikes me as very interesting, you said, "I sometimes hate what I am

doing to the girls because it turned them from human beings into objects

and they come to believe that how I photograph them is the way they

are". It gives me a terrific feeling of power. I said that years ago when

I was 25. That was in the early 60s. I have said lots of stupid things!

Maybe that is not stupid, maybe that is true. That you were turning girls

into objects. But only the stupid ones believed it. The girls I worked

with a lot like Jean Shrimpton, Anjelica Huston. They were all... We

have a picture here of Marie Helvin. She was a beautiful young American

model. You worked with her very early in her career, when I think

she was barely 20 and you ended up marrying her. And then she wrote a

memoir much later which she described her life with you. People

do look back on the way that men behaved. Powerful men in the 60s and

70s. And say I do not know how I did it or how I got away with it. It's

WH Auden. It is a time and place. You can't be judged by today's

standards on those standards. It was a completely different world. It was

a different attitude. Women would be getting undressed while they were

saying "no, I don't want to do this". So you work it out. Don't

tell me that men still don't do it or women still don't do it. Women

still don't do it. But the attitude in society particularly amongst

women has made it much less acceptable for them to behave in

that way. To behave in what way? Well, to use power... I didn't use

power. You think I was like a Hollywood mogul? You really think I

used my power that way? You're mad. You can't promise something like

that. It wouldn't even enter my mind. It was just a normal

relationship. I was just fortunate to be able to be surrounded by

beautiful women. You have been attacked over the years by

feminists. Well, especially the 70s feminists. They're still around,

some of them. They weren't about feminism. They were about hatred. Of

you? Of men. Let me get away from the dynamic of you and the women you

are photographing, and think about the imagery of women.

wonder whether you look back on what happens, in the period after the

early 60s, and worry about the way women have been portrayed? No. I

can't see much difference between what I did and what they did in the

renaissance. What is the difference? The editor of Vogue is leading a

campaign to get glossy magazines, and our general culture, away from

the idea that attractive women have to be stick thin. Opening to a wider

range of female looks. It is about selling frocks. The

camera puts ten or 15lbs on anybody. It is the way that the animal is. It

has nothing to do with saying all skinny women are beautiful. You

could say Botticelli started it with Venus coming out of the sea. She was

a skinny as anything around now. And there was nothing wrong with her.

Let me talk to you about how you get to the real essence or spirit of the

subjects that you have photographed. You are famous for iconic pictures

not just of beautiful women, but a range of rock stars, movie stars,

Jagger, Nicholson. You are so typical about what I do. You dismiss

everything. You have tunnel vision. Fashion is the least interesting

thing I've ever done in my life. Well let's look at this one then.

This isn't fashion. This is an image of the Kray twins. You spent quite a

lot of time with them. More with Reg than Ronnie. These

were two of London's most violent criminals. What was it like spending

time with them? It is difficult. Time and place. You didn't come from

the East End, obviously. But you didn't have too many choices in

life. People don't have too many choices. Like the Indian police for

example. They are earning ?10 a week. So if they earn ?500 to look

the other way, that is just the human condition. It is where you are

from. It is the time and place you exist.

What I am interested in is how you got these brothers, who were

infamous for their violence. They posed for you. That is the way you

took photographs. You got to know them first. How did that process

work for you? Given who they were, and what you knew about them?

I come from quite a tough background anyway. I wasn't unaware of gangs

and things. I was beat up myself quite a few times. Didn't you

discover that Ron had actually attacked your own father?

I only discovered that recently. My aunt who was 87 knew about it. I did

not know about it. I don't know. Another interesting thing you said

is that you actually fall in love with your subject. For the time you

are with them, and photographing them, it is a sort of intense

relationship. They are the sun in your world. For as long as you have

them where you are photographing them, I am wondering whether you can

do your job and come away with a photograph you are happy with with

somebody that you dislike, or don't connect with?

Yes, of course. It is to do with humanity and who we are. You can't

ignore one thing and be blind to it. It won't go away. If anything, I did

everyone a favour by making them famous. If you are a real gangster,

no`one knows who you are. Their big mistake was probably posing for me.

The ultimate celebrities, or the most famous people you could

imagine, are the royals. You worked with Diana.

She was a very nice woman. But let's be honest with ourselves. Putting

things in perspective, she and Charles weren't a fairytale prince

and princess. I don't put royalty in books. It is most people put

royalties in books are trying to sell the book.

I wonder whether, we talked earlier about your roots, has that come into

play in who you like to photograph? And who doesn't really turn you on

in terms of the subjects? I have photographed every politician

there is at the moment. It is that interesting? How are our

politicians? The most interesting to work with

was Margaret Thatcher. If I was going to photograph her I was happy.

She was charming, professional, and helpful.

Not long ago I interviewed a photographer called Giles Duley. He

used to work in the world of drama, fashion, and celebrity. He then got

fed up with it and couldn't do it any more. It did not mean enough to

him. He ended up working with NGOs and working in Afghanistan, in very

tough conditions. You have done some of that work too. If we look at this

picture here. I believe it was connected with Band`Aid. You went

out to Sudan. When you go there and do that kind of work does it fit?

You feel people do it with you? You are so associated with the 60s, that

in a sense people still link you with that time in that place. You

have done 40 years more work. Michelangelo, most people think of

the Sistine Chapel. He's a ceiling painter. But that was the thing he

did least. Everyone remembers him for the wrong reasons. You don't

expect people to remember you. There was a surrealist who on his deathbed

said nobody understood me. Except one man. And he didn't really

understand. So that is your life. Do you think that you haven't been

understood? I suspect that you think I haven't understood your work. I

think you went down a funny avenue sticking up for those silly

feminists in the 70s. But what you are saying is did I glamorise Sudan.

You have done so much. What is that you are proudest of? I don't do

proud. I think proud is silly. Why would I be proud? It is what I do. I

can paint pictures, make movies and make sculptures. I can't change

that. I do it because I do it. Your friend, another famous photographer,

here is a bit of his poetry. He said one thing that unites the great

photographers is that their pictures, no matter what they are

photographing, are really portraits of themselves. Do you think that is

true? You could say that about painters

too. But in the context of you? I am not

talking about literally the people you are photographing. But the

spirit behind the photograph. I like spirits. They laugh and don't take

life that seriously. But if we look at all of your work,

how would you say it captures your character?

Nobody has ever seen all of my lifetime. This is not a

retrospective. This thing at the National Portrait Gallery is

portraits I have taken. But journalists, in their great

intelligence, always say that it is a retrospective. They had to have

labels to put on it. I would be interested to know whether there is

something that this show captures about you that you can put into

words? If I had to think about that, I don't think I would do it. I would

leave it to other people. Critics in the Financial Times or something

like that. I just do what I do. If people like it...and if they dislike

it, tough on me and tough on them. Because maybe were both missing

something. There is a yin and yang in life. It's been a pleasure having

you on the programme. Don't tell porkies.

Bank holiday Monday is upon us and it's looking unsettled. There will

be sunshine and showers around and for much of the week, there