David Bailey's Stardust

At the weekend, I went home to London to see family and friends, but more importantly to see David Bailey's exhibition Stardust at the National Portrait Gallery. David Bailey has always been one of my favourite photographers, in fact I think it's safe to say that it was his work that first got me into photography - as Bailey himself once said, 'It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary'. So it is safe to say that my expectations were high, and I'm thrilled to report the exhibition did not disappoint. I absolutely loved the diverse range of his work and the exhibition really illustrated the extraordinary range of subjects that Bailey has captured: actors, writers, musicians, filmmakers, designers, models, artists and people encountered on his travels; many of them famous, some anonymous, all of them perfectly captured. That's the thing I love about him, he really manages to capture the individual, no matter who they are or where they're from you are shown a sense of their personality.

It is extremely rare that a leading institution allows an artist to curate his or her own retrospective, however I am so glad that they did. Featuring over 250 images, personally selected and printed by Bailey, the exhibition offers an unmissable opportunity to experience the work of one of the world’s greatest image-makers. He also designed the book (a must purchase of mine of course!) in fact Sandy Nairne, the gallery's Director, admitted that giving the artist such free rein was unusual; "We had to relax. It became very clear that he did have a vision about this show. This is Bailey through and through." But by giving Bailey free reign, we got to see all sides of his work, not just the famous shots of models and rock stars. In fact one whole room was dedicated to his wife Catherine Bailey, and featured many intensely personal shots of her and their children. As a huge fan of his work, I was wonderfully surprised at how few images in the exhibition I had actually seen before!

So, just in case you haven't got the hint, I loved the show and could not recommend it enough - I'm definitely going back whenever I'm next in London! To give you a little taste of what's on show, here's an extremely small selection of my favourites.