Rare and unseen David Bailey photos from his early days shooting 1960s London are a vintage visual treat

Since the ‘Swinging ‘60s’, the name David Bailey has been synonymous with style, portraiture, fashion and being THE biggest name in British photography, with his roots steeped deeply in London.

Bailey was born on 2 January 1938 in Leytonstone, Essex, but at the age of three he moved with his family to East Ham in the London borough of Newham.

So, it seems hugely fitting that Bailey’s early images of London take pride of place in the inaugural exhibition – named Time After Time – at the new Leica Gallery London, in the Mayfair district of England’s capital city. The gallery is part of the new, four-storey Leica Store London site, which officially opened its doors on 21 October 2026.

Dyslexia had hampered Bailey’s progress at school and he left aged 15 to become a copy boy in the Fleet Street offices of the Yorkshire Post newspaper. Bailey was called up for national service in 1956 and served with the RAF in Singapore in 1957, before being demobbed in August 1958.

It was then that he was determined to pursue a career in photography and, after previously owning a Rolleiflex camera, he decided to invest in a Canon rangefinder camera. His poor record at school meant he missed out on a place at the London College of Printing, but he soon became a second assistant to photographer David Ollins in Charlotte Mews.     

Bailey rose to fame after being contracted to Vogue magazine in 1960, just one year after he had become a photographic assistant at the John French studio and months after he’d joined John Cole’s Studio Five.

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