That One Time David Bailey Took My Portrait

I’d known Bailey before this day arrived, I was introduced to him by my very dear and now sadly departed friend Daniel. But that didn’t stop the anxiety of arriving at his studio that morning. However, much familiarity I had, the weight of his reputation sat heavily. This was David Bailey — the man who defined the look of the 1960s and far beyond. Imagine London in the sixties, and the image in your mind is likely one Bailey shot. (With a respectful nod to Terence Donovan)

Bailey had told me stories before and since about towering figures of the late 20^th century that to most of us are untouchable icons, but to him were his mates. The fact that Mick Jagger lived with him before the Stones were huge or stories about Andy Warhol from 1970’s New York that I won’t repeat here come to life – speaking to him about these things brings the landscape of a collective consciousness we all share firmly into tangible reality, through the lens of one man. From Picasso to Jean Shrimpton to John Lennon to HM The Queen – all are faces that he clicked into iconography. That day, it was my turn to sit in front of his camera.

Bailey doesn’t ease you in. There’s no theatre, no elaborate warm-up. But chatting in his studio, you can feel the time, the depth and almost the people that have been there over the decades. Those iconic images that scatter pretty much all our minds are scattered across wooden desks and hung on the walls.

What I hadn’t expected was how close the camera would be. Not really having the cheekbones for a modelling career I had rarely, if ever, been seriously photographed and to go from that to being photographed by the preeminent portrait photographer was quite the leap.

The camera, was barely six inches from my face (or at least that’s how I remember it) It felt almost invasive, like it was peering inside me. Bailey kept telling me to stop moving my head. I’m not, I insisted. You fucking are, he shot back, the words not at all unkind — just Bailey being Bailey. Unsurprisingly, he was right.

After a few frames, he decided to change approach, I think mainly out of frustration with my big head moving all over the place. “Let’s try something else,” he said, calling to Fenton, his son — an extremely talented photographer in his own right. Fenton brought over some boxes, and Bailey told me to lean on them. I shifted, settled, and then came the click. And that was it. Just like that, he knew he had it. The session was over. I was a little blindsided that it was all over so quickly and maybe even disappointed. How could this thing that was so big in my mind, this once in a lifetime opportunity, be captured already, it didn’t fit the contrived perfection that I was imagining. Anyway, I thought, regardless, the moment was magical, whatever the outcome of the photo.

It took a few weeks to get to see the portrait. Bailey and his wonderful wife Catherine bought it to a lunch we were having on the Portobello Road in London.

I was so excited to see it, and of course whilst I didn’t have low expectations because it was a portrait by the world’s greatest portrait photographer, I did remember my shaky head and the sudden ending to the session.

When I finally saw the portrait, I cried - in a restaurant on the Portobello Road on a Saturday lunchtime – not an ideal setting. But it was such a profound moment. That moment that I thought was too short to mean anything had captured me in the most incurable way.

Anyone who visits my office where the original hangs says the same thing — how much it captures me and my essence. I couldn’t see it at first, I loved it as a photograph and for the reasons I mention above, but the capturing of me has grown on me, as more and more people have the same response.

It’s layered further by being something that brings me close to history. However inconsequential I may be in the arc of Bailey’s work, the photograph wasn’t just an image of me. It was an image by him. And that moved me deeply. And that simple fact gives it a weight, a feeling that in this very small way my life is intertwined with his and in turn with those figures that he has captured. Reflected glory it certainly is, but it’s a light that shines so brightly it’s impossible to not feel its warmth.

That’s Bailey’s gift, I guess. He doesn’t give you who you think you are, or who you want to be. He gives you a distilled, unflinching version of yourself. To be photographed by him and to be placed in the same visual lineage as some of the most extraordinary figures of modern culture is something I will forever be honoured, grateful and humbled by.