Getting The Picture

Episodes

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01The Camera Has Attitudes2014011320140501 (R4)David Bailey's portrait photographs are world famous, instantly recognisable and have charted decades of fashion, celebrity and notoriety.

You can't be judgmental and be a photographer,' Bailey says in the first of two programmes in which he tells Tim Marlow, how he's gone about producing the images which have defined our times.

Bailey reveals how he got started and how the portraiture that shot him to fame makes fashion photography more potent. 'I thought the best way to sell the frock is through the girl. If the girl doesn't work, the picture doesn't work,' he says.

As he lights Tim's own photographic portrait and selects the cameras for the shoot, Bailey discusses how he has gone about portraiture over the last 50 years or more.

In the central London studio which houses his archive of images, Bailey also reveals to Tim how he made his name with photographs of such stars as Marianne Faithfull, most notably for 'Vogue'.

And Tim talks to Marianne Faithfull herself about the two striking images of her which Bailey shot - in youth and in later years - and the sharply contrasting views she has of them now.

As this first programme draws to a close, the first shots of Tim's photographic session with Bailey are taken.

Producer: Simon Coates

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014

David Bailey reveals how he's photographed the images that have defined the last 60 years.

Tim Marlow talks to celebrated photographer David Bailey.

02He Seduces Everybody!2014012020140508 (R4)David Bailey discusses with Tim Marlow the less well-known - but just as definitive - aspects of his portraiture. These include the documentary photographs he has taken on trips around the world which date back to his National Service in Singapore in the 1950s.

Bailey explains how the writer Rudyard Kipling and the explorer Sir Richard Burton fired his youthful imagination. He also talks about his reaction to the New York of the early 1960s and meeting Andy Warhol there. To a doubtful Tim, who wonders if there will be a change of heart, Bailey initially claims his recent punishing trip to India's Nagaland will also be his last foreign foray. This programme reveals if Bailey will in fact do more work abroad and, if so, where.

Bailey also discusses the joint ventures he has undertaken, including those with his wife Catherine, and with the artist Damien Hirst. Hirst, in turn, reveals how he and Bailey came to work together and what their collaborations have achieved.

As the opening of his show at London's National Portrait Gallery draws near, Bailey looks back on some of the shots that give him special pleasure.

And Catherine tells Tim that Bailey 'seduces everyone from behind the camera'. She adds, 'He does it to me, he does it to everybody!

The second of two programmes about Bailey's work.

Producer Simon Coates

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014.

David Bailey tells the stories behind his photographs that have defined the last 60 years.

Tim Marlow talks to celebrated photographer David Bailey.