‘I had nightmares of buildings falling on me’

As his 1982 book ‘NW1’ is reprinted, photographer David Bailey recalls the childhood trauma that inspired him to ditch It-girls for brick walls

Born in Leytonstone, east London, in 1938, David Bailey made his name photographing the most iconic figures of Sixties London, from Michael Caine to Twiggy. Among his celebrity portraits and fashion shoots, ‘NW1’, named after the postcode of the London neighbourhood it depicts, reveals another side to him.

Iwas six years old when London was bombed nightly by the Luftwaffe. The air raid shelter in the backyard was full of water; many were, some people kept ducks in them. My mother thought the next safest place to hide from the bombs was the coal cellar. I must have spent about four years in that coal cellar.

At the time I had repeated nightmares of buildings falling on top of me. I would wake up shouting, with my mother’s scary face and piercing eyes in front of me, but the bricks kept falling. Bricks were everywhere; red and yellow bricks. The coal cellar was also built of brick and painted white; the paint would get on everything you were wearing.

The streets were always covered with broken glass. I love the sound of walking on glass and the noise it makes as it breaks. There were pieces of broken glass and brick everywhere; it looked like they had been washed in by the tide.

Pubs, churches, cinemas and peoples’ homes all lay to waste. Houses cut in two like dolls’ houses that open their whole front; bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and toilets still standing on the broken floorboards. They seemed to tell the story of the people that lived there, like an invasion into their personal life.

These buildings were the first buildings that I knew, and they had a gothic effect on me. I prefer buildings that have a certain history about them, and the people that lived in them, made love in them, gave birth or died in them. The façade of a building is like a person’s face, it tells its history.