‘Changing Fashion’: a new exhibition explores how photographer David Bailey reshaped style

As one of the country’s most esteemed living fashion and portrait photographers, David Bailey is, and has long been, synonymous with the visual architecture of British fashion. From his initial Vogue appointment in 1960, by editor Ailsa Garland early in her short tenure at the title, to his much lauded collaborations with models like Kate Moss and Jean Shrimpton (the latter his former girlfriend, muse, and inadvertent co-captain of London’s Swinging Sixties), Bailey’s is a legacy that’s almost impossible to separate from the industry.

The moniker assigned to his latest exhibition, then, ‘David Bailey’s Changing Fashion’, at the Marta Ortega Pérez (MOP) Foundation in A Coruña, Spain, is wonderfully apt. ‘He loves a double-entendre in his titles, so it works for Bailey,’ says his son, Fenton Fox Bailey, a photographer in his own right and Bailey’s studio manager. ‘He did change how we see fashion, and as he puts it, “fashion has to change or you just have old-fashioned”.’

‘David Bailey’s Changing Fashion’ at the MOP Foundation

Perhaps surprisingly, given his decades-long career and worldwide appeal (he has published upward of 30 books – recently David Bailey: Eighties – and in the last three decades alone exhibited across the UK, US and Europe), ‘Changing Fashion’ is Bailey’s first major presentation in Spain, and arrives at the invitation of MOP president Marta Ortega Pérez. ‘Without question, David Bailey is a master of a visual language that is uniquely his own,’ she says. ‘From the early days, he consistently backed his own vision, breaking the rules of fashion photography and inventing new ones at will.’

Opened in December 2021 with an exhibition of work by Peter Lindbergh, the foundation, in the Galicia region of north-west Spain, has established a solid programme showcasing those whose work has shaped modern fashion photography, additionally staging exhibitions about Helmut Newton and Steven Meisel. ‘Marta has great taste,’ offers Fenton, ‘and the MOP is doing brilliant things for photography. The space they’ve built is incredible.’

The new show largely belongs to the 1960s and 1970s, key periods of Bailey’s career, because, as Fenton puts it, ‘it was just a brilliant time for fashion. [Also] many people in Spain might not have seen Bailey’s work in person, so starting at the beginning made sense.’ Featuring a vast selection of some 140-plus photographs, the exhibition highlights a number of Bailey’s most recognisable works – such as 1965’s at-the-time controversial Box of Pin-Ups – as well as several lesser-known pieces that have not previously been shown in public. ‘Bailey’s always looking ahead, so he hadn’t revisited a lot of this work in a while,’ says Fenton. ‘He always says, “If it wasn’t published, it wasn’t any good.” He’s very critical of his own work, but it actually helped us spot more unseen material.’

Alongside the prints, which are grouped by location and studio work and split between the two decades (nudes hang in the back, while more recent work closes the show), Bailey’s studio is also highlighted at the foundation. The studio was once likened to a nightclub – by the late Diana Vreeland, in a comparison with Irving Penn, whose studio was apparently more ‘like a cathedral’ – and in Spain, various ephemera, ‘things Bailey’s collected over the years’, are brought together in cabinets, building a fuller picture of how the celebrated photographer operates. ‘They show his love for travel and his eye for the unusual,’ says Fenton. ‘He’s always looking for the unexpected.’

‘David Bailey’s Changing Fashion’ at the MOP Foundation, A Coruña, Spain runs until 14 eptember 2025.

davidbailey.themopfoundation.org