Pictures that Mark can do

“Mark is good natured. He finds the best in most things. To explain more would be too much. These are just pictures that Mark can do.” David Bailey may be a master of the medium but he also readily accepts that photography is technologically driven. The snapshot is a part of our visual culture and many photographs have been taken millions of times, with just slight variations, such as the identity of the people in a family portrait. Bailey also takes such snaps, images imbued with a sense of ease and freedom yet which in his hands carry much greater weight and significance. He believes these photographs appear so easy that even Mark, his assistant, could have made them – and so this quip became the title of this, his latest book.