David Bailey's Model Wife

David Bailey is a photographer whose personal life has become as famous as his pictures. His association with Catherine Deneuve (whom he married), Penelope Tree and Jean Shrimpton guaranteed that. Since his first assignment for British Vogue in 1959 (when he was 21 years old), he has demonstrated an idiosyncratic sense of fashion photography that placed beautiful women and designer clothes in bizarre situations. It was the perfect conceit for the Sixties. Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up was based loosely on Bailey's style and career. You remember, a photographer crawling around on seamless background paper with a couple of lissome would-be models? Well, times have changed. That's not to say that Bailey has relinquished his considerable stature as one of Europe's most gifted photographers. It's just that now he seems to be concentrating on pictures of his wife, model Marie Helvin. (They are shown together at left.) So much so that he decided--with some encouragement from us--to create a portfolio, being published by Rizzoli--simultaneously published in England by Thames and Hudson as David Bailey's Trouble and Strife.