This talk was one in a series being run by the Royal Academy and featured David Bailey in conversation with Tim Marlow, the Chief Executive and Director of the Design Museum. The talk was loosely scheduled to coincide with the publication by Taschen of The David Bailey Sumo, a limited edition retrospective featuring 300 of Bailey’s portraits.

The discussion was wide ranging and touched on topics as diverse as why Bailey had not has major exhibitions; to which there did not seem to be an answer. Why photographic exhibitions were popular? They were cheaper to insure than paintings. But most of the discussion was about how Bailey became interested in photography, why he did not photograph his hero, Picasso and why his work was over-whelmingly about people; ‘landscape is effing boring!’ or words to that effect.

Overall the talk was entertaining rather than particularly revalatory and did not offer up any pearls of wisdom that that I will be able to use on this module or the course generally. However, it was an enjoyable hour and I think hearing people like Tracy Emin and David Bailey discuss their work does encourage me to go and take photographs and try new things.

This was not the first time the RA have hosted David Bailey in conversation with Tim Marlow and below is a video from 2016 which gives and idea of the format and the content.