David Bailey

Sur le site Nowness,
une entrevue avec le photographe
anglais David Bailey

"So… back to the flowers. It’s a very classical choice of subjects, were you looking at old masters?
No, not particularly. I mean I know lots of [history]… the first real still lifes were in the renaissance, and you can go back to Pompeii and all that stuff.  It’s not just flowers, it’s skulls as well!

Yes—where do the skulls come from?
Dead people.

But where do you get a skull these days?
From the skull shop, where do you think? You saunter up and you buy a skull.

Which one would you recommend though?
Oh I’m not going to make it that easy for you.

Ok, but you weren’t hanging round graveyards looking for props?
No, no. I’ve been collecting skulls for years and years. At least 30 years.

How many are we talking?
I don’t know, I’ve really never counted, they’ve just accumulated. When you’re as old as me you accumulate things.

Where are they kept—do you have your own ossary?
No they’re in the studio, I still use them!

Your most recent exhibitions have been of the 60s work—do you ever get sick of being associated with that?
Yes. People are so… that’s what they think you do. I take black-and-white pictures of John Lennon in 1964, and then I stopped. "