David Bailey: Chasing Rainbows

Commissioned by the best-known fashion magazines of the time, including Italian and French Vogue, 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, at the heart of which lies an abstract kind of beauty. 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.