David Bailey: Chasing Rainbows

The name of David Bailey is synonymous with photographs of beautiful women. Through his long and extraordinarily successful career, he has focused his camera on many of the most sublime faces of our time. Among Bailey's hundreds of magnificent color photographs is a special pantheon of "beauty" photographs. These are his amazing images of some of the world's most famous models presenting the face of the moment: the "look" that represents the apex of beauty for that particular time. Like the rainbow, this beauty comes and goes. It is fickle and ever changing. But Bailey has spent a lifetime chasing these rainbows and, more often than any other photographer over the years, he has succeeded in capturing the iconic faces of each era, the ones most admired by women and most desired by men. In this latest celebration of his art Bailey brings together for the first time the best of all these "beauty" photographs from the 1960s up to the present day. Commissioned by the best-known fashion magazines of the time, these portraits of what Vogue once called "The Bailey Kind of Girl" include models such as Jean Shrimpton, Marie Helvin, Penelope Tree, and Bailey's wife, Catherine Dyer. Blended with these are Bailey's startling ethnographic portraits of, for example, Asaro mud men and Indian dancers, and his own paintings. In his illuminating introduction, Robin Muir sets these photographs in the context of the period in which they were taken and reminds us that for over forty years Bailey has challenged our notions of female beauty with his own highly personal vision. The sensational color images collected here testify that few are more expert than this photographer on a subject that is today preoccupying us more than ever. No admirer of either beauty or Bailey will want to be without this book. 110 color photographs.

David Bailey is one of the world's best-known photographers. His previous books include David Bailey: Birth of the Cool, David Bailey's Rock and Roll Heroes, and David Bailey: If We Shadows. Robin Muir is a writer and curator and a former Picture Editor of British Vogue and the Sunday Telegraph magazine.