(1938 - )
Born in Leytonstone in 1938, David Royston Bailey left school at 15 to become a copy boy at the Yorkshire Post. Affected by dyslexia, Bailey reflected in 2011 that ‘dyslexia gave me a privilege. It pushed me into being totally visual.’ He was called up for National Service in 1956, serving with the Royal Air Force in Singapore. Bailey worked as an assistant to David Ollins and at the John French studio, before joining John Cole’s Studio Five in 1960 as a photographer where he worked as a fashion photographer for British Vogue magazine. Associated with the 'Swinging London' of the 1960s, Bailey further captured this scene in TV Documentaries and film. In 2001, he was appointed a CBE and awarded The Royal Photographic Society's Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship in 2005. The exhibition Bailey’s Stardust opened at the National Gallery in 2014, and brought together a wide variety of his photographs from a career that has spanned more than half a century.