David Bailey Quotes

It’s funny: you hate authority and then your photography takes on an authority.

I grew up scared of Hitler. I wanted to kill him because he spent all my childhood trying to kill me.

I never cared for fashion much. Amusing little seams and witty little pleats. It was the girls I liked.

You have to kind of be invisible when you photograph children, so you use a longer lens.

You can’t really copy what I do because I don’t do anything.

When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.

The trouble with people like Tony Blair is they get confused, they think intelligence is education when they’re two different things.

The Sixties was a time of breaking down class barriers, although I think class still exists today in some areas.

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.

Rather than knowing more, I think I’ve got more open-minded.

Photography is more about money now but then so are most things.

Nothing wrong with retouching – nothing new about retouching.

My friends are all megalomaniacs – from Damien Hirst to Jack Nicholson – all of them.