Through the Lens, Book 5

Bailey's Stardust: National Portrait Gallery

By: Marina Vaizey

Narrated by: Dana Brewer Harris

Several hundred photographs of varying scales, and most of them newly printed gelatin silver prints, in superb tones of greys, blacks, and whites, take us into a world that has been subliminally familiar to us for nearly 50 years.

Stardust is the title given to this self-selected retrospective, three years in the making, the photographer his own curator, and the word neatly encapsulates the fascinating conundrum of photography itself. As Bailey himself puts it, "It's not the camera that takes the picture, it's the person," and these photographs are as much about Bailey as his subject - his terrific insouciance, his seemingly natural, unforced, spontaneous eye, his alert rapidity when working. His is the stardust, for he makes his subjects - from the tribesmen of Nagaland, aborigines, and the ornamented peoples of Papua New Guinea, the models for Vogue, the politicians, entertainers, writers and artists - stars. Some can even appear strikingly unfamiliar: the boyish Damon Albarn is anguished. The spectrum from Mick Jagger's masculinity to his androgyny, and even prettiness, framed by a fur hood, is strikingly portrayed.

©2015 Cv Publications (P)2017 Cv Publications