David Bailey, Don McCullin

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2019

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

The photographers, David Bailey and Don McCullin, came to prominence in the 1960s but their pictures did more than define a decade. Don McCullin's work in Vietnam, Biafra, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and the Middle East have come to epitomise what we mean by war photography and David Bailey's portraits of Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger and Catherine Deneuve established a new idiom for glamour. Yet fame has tended to obscure the full range of both men's work. Bailey, for example, has produced a huge volume of images conjuring up a spectral London as well as his portraits while McCulllin has infused the Somerset levels where he now lives with a haunted beauty. As Philip Dodd discovered when he visited David Bailey in his studio and caught up with Don McCullin on the eve of his Tate show both men have vivid memories of the Blitz and were transformed by their experience of National Service.

Don McCullin is on show at Tate Britain until May 6th 2019. David Bailey: The Sixties is on show at Gagosian Gallery, Davies Street in London until March 30th.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
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0:37.1	Hello, I'm Philip Dodd, and this is the Arts and Ideas podcast from BBC Radio 3.
0:43.0	The kind of guests we have on writers, artists, philosophers, historians and filmmakers,
0:49.2	and we challenge and cajole them, we even laugh with them,
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1:41.6	Hello, both were born in London. Both came to prominence in the 1960s, yet they took
1:48.3	different roads, and that made all the difference. One is known as one of the greatest of all
1:54.2	war photographers, the other as one of the best ever fashion photographers, yet neither feels the
2:00.2	description does them anything like justice.
2:03.6	My two guests are Don McCullen, whose retrospective has recently opened at Tate Britain,
2:08.6	and David Bailey, whose exhibition of 60s portraits, is on at the Goghossian Gallery in London.
	...

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