Blood brothers

DAVID Bailey is locked into an intense discussion on his mobile phone as I arrive at his studio, which gives me time both to gather my nerve (he is rumoured to be an awkward, hostile interviewee if the mood takes him) and to case the joint for useful prompts to reminiscence.

These prove to be abundant, and, as soon as he is free, we chat about some of them. The music system, for example, is pounding out Let's Spend the Night Together, a hit from the days - nearly four decades ago - when Bailey, grooviest lensman in town, used to hang out with Mick and Keith and show them how best to spend their royalties.

Bailey was born in 1938, which means that he easily qualifies for a free bus pass, but he still fizzes with restless energy, wears pointy snakeskin boots and taps his toe vigorously to the clanging chords as he talks. He needs that energy: he's still a busy, hardworking professional.

Bailey is the sometime beautiful, famous photographer of almost equally famous, beautiful women (some of whom he married; following his first marriage to Clapham typist Rosemary Bramble, he wed Catherine Deneuve, then Marie Helvin and he is still with his fourth wife, Catherine Dyer). His glamorous models are represented here by a large colour print of the cheeky Italian porn star-cummaverick politician, La Cicciolina, halfway up a ladder and dressed as a kitschy angel.

"That was for Italian Vanity Fair - the Italians seem to like me more than the British do these days. We [ meaning Bailey, with the help of his muscular assistants] do hundreds of pages for them every year. I thought, well, she'll never get to heaven in her own right, so I'll put wings on her. Lovely woman; so normal - in her abnormal way."

A smaller print of another Italian national treasure, the film director Michelangelo Antonioni, sparks memories of the director's definitive swinging-London movie Blow-Up, in which David Hemmings played a womanising fashion photographer who was obviously inspired by Bailey.

"I never met Antonioni at the time," Bailey recalls. "I did meet Carlo Ponti, the producer. I couldn't understand why he kept looking at my clothes, making notes. I thought they wanted me to direct it, and I was totally up for it. At that age - I was, what, 25? - you'd redo The Ten Commandments or Citizen Kane, you're that arrogant."

What did Bailey think of Blow-Up? "I thought it was a bit boring. Didn't you?" (Yes.) Finally, dominating even this wideopen studio space, the far wall is almost completely covered by one of Damien Hirst's gargantuan butterfly pieces, a reminder of the newest Rude Boy in the Bailey orbit, and also of the immediate occasion for this meeting: a twin show at the Gagosian Gallery in the West End (until 5 June), representing both Bailey solo and a Bailey/ Hirst double-act.

"I first met Damien - you know I used to direct a lot of commercials? - when he came in one day while I was working at Ridley Scott's place in Soho. I didn't see him again for about two years, and then I took his picture, and I kept taking his picture.

"I thought he was the most interesting of that lot [the Young British Artists], right from when I saw the shark. And then, by chance, I was walking in [Greenwich] Village, and went past Gagosian's [New York] gallery, and there was the cow, the cutup cow. It's one of those things that knocked me sideways. I thought: My God, this is something beyond my imagination. Just terrific, so original."

The origins of the new Gagosian collaboration date from the point when Bailey decided to take some pictures of Hirst's installation of the handicapped children mannequins that, in the 1950s and 1960s, stood outside shops to raise money for medical charities - "I blew them up big," says Bailey, "and Damien saw them, and we sort of seemed to have quite a lot in common, so it just came about like that."

Their joint show, Stations of the Cross, occupying the ground floor of the Gagosian, uses the traditional stages of Christ's Passion as the starting point for 13 king-size, richly saturated colour photos of large-breasted naked women, a decapitated cow, cigarette ends stubbed out on the cross, buckets of blood - that sort of thing.

Hirst contrived the imagery, Bailey composed the shots, and even those who recoil from the content might - if not shouting, or crying, or being sick - be persuaded to concede the technical flair of the shots, which match stark lighting effects with the subtlest gradations of tone.

One of the gentler images shows a kneeling Simon, in red robes, offering succour to a full-frontally naked Messiah: Jesus is played by Hirst, Simon by Bailey. "He gets the starring part, and I'm just Simple Simon. And I'm circumcised - he's not."

In the basement of the gallery there is a collection of much smaller, blackand-white images: Bailey's portraits of artists. Some of them are from the past couple of years, some are decades old, and at least two or three will be familiar to almost every visitor: a young Andy Warhol, leaning directly into the camera with his mouth slightly gaping, and an equally young David Hockney, innocently playing with his outsize, round-rimmed glasses.

Here, too, are the likes of Auerbach, Beuys ("the only heir to Duchamp") - and Hirst, goonishly bending his nose with his glasses. There is also a trio of veteran photographers, some of the greatest and Bailey's heroes: Brassai, Lartigue, Man Ray ("very grumpy"). "Lartigue was an incredible guy. In his nineties, he walked a mile a day and drank three litres of water. I'd have thought it would keep him up all night peeing ..."

The once-lissom photographer clearly has age on his mind, and lately has taken to referring to himself selfdeprecatingly as "fat and bald".

"Stocky" would be a more apt term and when he finally takes off his black woollen cap towards the end of our meeting, he reveals not a glistening pate but an interestingly untamed mane of medium-long grey hair.

MORE than any physical attribute, though, the things that strike you are the voice (quite high, and very much the cheekychappie after all these years), the incorrigible saltiness (he effs and blinds to Olympic standard), and above all the laughter. It is frequent and endearing: when he really lets rip, his face goes purple and his eyes water.

Nothing if not digressive, Bailey veers away from the subject of his own work, and from most direct questions. When I finally chance asking him which of the two new shows is his own favourite, he is typically evasive. "Oh, I don't know. Don't ask me intellectual questions. I'm just a simple boy from the East End ..." More laughter.

But come now, Mr Bailey, asking you which one you prefer is hardly an "intellectual" question ...? "Oh it is, it really is ... I like butterflies ..." and he points across the room to Hirst's colourful plane of lepidoptera.

Bailey, it's clear, is the kind of Englishman who would sooner be accused of arson than of pretentiousness. Instead, he turns the tables and asks me a question. People, he says, are calling the Stations exhibition shocking: "Did you find it shocking?"

Well, no, not at all, I have to admit, but then I'm not a Catholic. "Nor am I, but if I was going to have any faith, I would definitely be a Catholic.

Just think of it: St Peter's as your head office, and Michelangelo doing the commercials. I'd have some of that!"

And his face goes purple again as the huge Bailey laugh swells through the studio.

. Fiona Maddocks is away

(c)2004. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.