A landmark exhibition of the work of David Bailey will open at the National Portrait Gallery in February 2014. It will include a new portrait of Kate Moss, exhibited for the first time, together with previously unseen work including images from his 2012 travels to the Naga Hills in India.
Selected by the photographer, Bailey's Stardust (6 February – 1 June 2014) will be one of the Gallery's largest scale photography exhibitions, with over 250 portraits occupying most of its ground floor.
Bailey is one of the world's most distinguished and distinctive photographers, creating imaginative and thought-provoking portraits. As well as including new work, the exhibition will contain a wide variety of Bailey's photographs from his career that has spanned more than half a century.
The portraits selected by Bailey are of actors, writers, musicians, politicians, filmmakers, models, artists and people encountered on his travels; many of them famous, some unknown, all of them engaging and memorable. Bailey will be making new silver gelatin prints of his black-and-white portraits especially for the exhibition.
Rooms devoted to striking portraits of The Rolling Stones and Catherine Bailey contrast with remarkable documentary photographs from the photographer's expedition to Papua New Guinea in 1974 and moving images of those devastated by the famine in east Africa taken in support of the Band Aid charity in 1985.
Sandy Nairne, Director of the NPG says,
Bailey's Stardust is a very special event. It offers an exceptional opportunity to enjoy the widest range of the mercurial portraits created by David Bailey, one of the world's greatest image-makers.'
BAILEY'S STARDUST is sponsored by HUGO BOSS
National Portrait Gallery, London (6 February – 1 June 2014)
General information: 0207 306 0055 Recorded information: 020 7312 2463 Website/Tickets: www.npg.org.uk
Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.
His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.
