Top 112 Quotes & Sayings by David Bailey
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English photographer David Bailey.
Last updated on November 3, 2024.
I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked.
You adapt to who you're photographing.
It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.
The only thing they can't teach you at art school is art.
Everyone gets old - there's nothing you can do about it.
The best advice I ever got was that knowledge is power and to keep reading.
I don't really like the term 'artist.' I'm not sure what it means. It's a bit like 'love.'
I was a terrible father. The most I ever did for my children was to teach them chess. At least they got that.
My first influence obviously was Picasso.
I just thought it was magic that you could stick a bit of paper in some coffee-type liquid and a picture comes out.
I could develop a picture by the time I was 12.
I have always wanted to live in the present and never the past.
The reason I did fashion was it was the only way to get paid to do anything creative. You couldn't support yourself as an 'artist' - I hate that word. The only way you could be 'arty' was as a fashion photographer, because it still had a certain amount of integrity involved.
I had a terrible time with feminists in the Seventies. They hated me, those women. I think they hated everything.
I sort of fall in love with them when I'm photographing them - men and women.
I'm not a philosopher, I'm just a simple boy from East Ham.
I've never been anti-women.
I left school on my 15th birthday.
I hate men who are in touch with their feminine side.
John Parsons, the gay art director at 'Vogue,' really started my career.
It is a sign of a dull nature to occupy oneself deeply in matters that concern the body; for instance, to be over much occupied about exercise, about eating and drinking, about easing oneself, about sexual intercourse.
I'm not political and I don't judge.
When I die I want to go to Vogue.
The skull is nature's sculpture.
You can't really copy what I do because I don't do anything.
To get rich, you have to be making money while you're asleep.
All pictures are unnatural. All pictures are sad because they're about dead people. Paintings you don't think of in a special time or with a specific event. With photos I always think I'm looking at something dead.
My father was a tailor, my mother a machinist.
Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.
Being trendy is dangerous. I've never been trendy, which is why I've never really fallen out of favour.
Nothing wrong with retouching - nothing new about retouching.
Being dyslexic, I was told that I was an idiot all the time.
I've been used by women all my life, fortunately.
I have never met an ugly woman.
Rather than knowing more, I think I've got more open-minded.
In France they don't think I'm difficult.
I never set out to be a photographer.
I've always tried to do pictures that don't date.
I guess I'm the last of the Cockneys.
I didn't try and do fashion pictures. I tried to do portraits of girls wearing dresses.
I never tried to revolutionise photography; I just do what I do and keep my fingers crossed that people will like it.
I like change. There's something Buddhist about it - continuous change is wonderful.
I was ten when I got my first serious beating. It was rough.
Being handsome wasn't much of a burden. It worked for me.
I always go for simplicity.
Anybody can be a great photographer if they zoom in enough on what they love.
I don't think global warming is to do with us, I think it's a natural circle. I don't think a few Ferraris make that much difference.
All I could do at school was paint and draw and that was the only time I ever passed any exam. It was the only thing I ever got right at school.
Fortunately I didn't get educated because if I'd got educated I'd be an educated fool now.
If you're curious, London's an amazing place.
In New York, everyone's desperate for success, desperate for money and desperate to be accepted, but in London they're more laid back about things like that.
My exploits are nothing now to the average person.
Rockers are the nicest people to photograph. They have no inhibitions.
I hate being so nostalgic about the Sixties.
London changes because of money. It's real estate. If they can build some offices or expensive apartments they will, it's money that changes everything in a city.
A positive attitude can really make dreams come true - it did for me.
People want security in this insecure world.
My friends are all megalomaniacs - from Damien Hirst to Jack Nicholson - all of them.
Sometimes I still can't believe my luck.
I was dyslexic, so I was put in the silly class at school.
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