DAVID BAILEY: A PHOTOGRAPHY LEGEND WHO BROKE THE RULES AND SHAPED OUR CULTURE
The Marta Ortega Pérez (MOP) Foundation announces David Bailey’s Changing Fashion – the first major exhibition in Spain by the acclaimed British photographer.
David Bailey is one of the world’s leading fashion and portrait photographers. No one did more to define the creative and cultural revolution that drove the Sixties in London. He did not simply document the stars of the era with his camera; he was one of them.
A new exhibition by the Marta Ortega Pérez (MOP) Foundation, opening on June 28 2025 at its space in A Coruña, Galicia, will immerse visitors in the glamour and energy of the 1960s and 1970s, as seen through Bailey’s lens. It will feature more than 140 of his photographs from these two landmark decades, some of them being exhibited for the first time.
David Bailey’s Changing Fashions is the fifth in a series of world-class exhibitions presented by the MOP Foundation, whose President, Marta Ortega Pérez says:
‘Without question, David Bailey is a master of a visual language that is uniquely his own. From the early days, he consistently backed his own vision, breaking the rules of fashion photography and inventing new ones at will.
‘No one moved with greater ease through the worlds of Sixties music, fashion and style.
‘I am thrilled that with this exhibition, we have been able, once again, to champion world-class photography at our space in A Coruña. This exhibition captures a fleeting golden moment that utterly changed the history of style, photography and culture.’
The Foundation’s first exhibition in A Coruña, which opened in December 2021, presented the work of Peter Lindbergh. Subsequent shows have covered Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn, establishing the space as a world-class venue in Spain for visitors to experience the work of the greatest fashion and portrait photographers.
David Bailey’s Changing Fashion opens with a sequence of photos of Jean Shrimpton, whose modelling work with Bailey brought her to prominence.
The exhibition pays special attention to David Bailey’s box of pin-ups the photographer’s 1965 portfolio of 36 members of London’s glitterati ranging from Mick Jagger to Rudolf Nureyev, Shrimpton, Michael Caine, Cecil Beaton and, controversially at the time, the notorious London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray all belonging to Bailey’s celebrity milieu.
Through a collection of carefully curated ephemera displayed in cabinets of curiosity across the space, the exhibition also dwells on the unique character of Bailey’s studio, famously captured by Diana Vreeland, one of his editors at Vogue, who said, ‘Irving Penn’s studio is like a cathedral; David Bailey’s studio is like a nightclub.’
David Bailey’s Changing Fashion also includes a specially commissioned film – a reimagining of box of pin-ups, as well as a takeaway publication inspired by Ritz, the celebrity, fashion and gossip magazine Bailey co-founded with David Litchfield in 1976.
David Bailey’s Changing Fashion opens on June 28, 2025, at the MOP Foundation exhibition space in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain.