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Juicy anecdotes, a huge amount of sex and stories of the Krays … but the photographer’s memoir reveals a narcissist and bully
“I think photography is all sex,” writes David Bailey. “That’s what happens when you’re close to somebody – you end up in bed with them.” He should know. Along with getting a good picture, “getting my leg across”, as he puts it, was his raison d’être throughout his career. In his memoir, he reveals how he bedded scores of young models and actors, as well as other people’s wives and girlfriends. There were relationships with the models Jean Shrimpton, who helped make his name, and Penelope Tree, who was 18 when they started dating. He had an affair with Anjelica Huston when she was with Jack Nicholson, and married Catherine Deneuve. Now he is married to the former model Catherine Dyer, with whom he has three children.
Bailey, who is now 82, professes to love women, but only if they’re thin and have small breasts – “I don’t like big udders,” he says. On meeting Deneuve, he wrote her off as too short and a “bit on the fat side”, though evidently revised his opinion later on. He grew apart from Tree at the same time that he perceived she was beginning to put on weight, and developed a skin condition that ended her career. In their final months together, he found consolation in the arms of a friend’s wife. Continue reading...