David Bailey Quotes

I think I'm better behind the camera than I am in front.

I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.

My father did advertising photography.

Everyone takes pictures, so you need to have your own opinion.

I really love advertising art of the '50s and the way mid-century design was often represented in jazzy, fast art.

I'm going to put every aspect of myself out into the world and try to convey it through photography.

I’m trying to please myself; certainly that’s a big criterion... though in a sense, I don’t take images just for myself. I take images that I think other people will want to see. I don’t take pictures to put in a box and hide them. I want as many people to see them as possible.

There are an awful lot of people in the world and it's going to be terribly hard to photograph all of them... It was my teacher Lisette Model who finally made it clear to me that the more specific you are, the more general it will be.

Advertising, an art, is constantly besieged and compromised by logicians and technocrats, the scientists of our profession who wildly miss the main point about everything we do.

I have never taken a photograph without one thought in my head to amuse myself.

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they'll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don't have anything in your head or in your heart.

In every photographer there is something of a stroller.

Good advertising is a happy wedding of words and pictures, not a contest between them.

I love photography and art-directing is something that I really would enjoy to do.

I want my photographs not only to be real but to portray the essence of my subjects also. In order to do that, you have to be patient.

The photographer's art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time.

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.

My intention is to make interesting photographs. That's it, in the end. I don't make it up. Let's say it's a world I never made. That's what was there to deal with.

The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy ... people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing.

Photography isn't about seeing, it's about feeling. If I don't have some kind of feeling for what I'm shooting, how can I expect the person who looks at it to feel anything?

The camera can be a machine gun, a warm kiss, a sketchbook. Shooting a camera is like saying, Yes, yes, yes. There is no maybe. All the maybes should go in the trash.

I say half jokingly that photography is the most difficult of the arts. It does require a certain arrogance to see and to choose. I feel myself walking on a tightrope instead of on the ground.

On digital photography: It's fantastic, but it's not a freebie for anything. You still have to have this (he points to his eyes), and this (points to his heart), and feet.

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.