Lens crafters
David Bailey and Bruce Weber are old school about camera technology but have no problem with the digital revolution
The two photography legends are a good fit for each other. One is chatty and chirpy, an amiable raconteur with a bundle of entertaining stories to tell; the other is quiet and thoughtful, perhaps a little shy, but still a source of hilarious anecdotes, such as photographing Elizabeth Taylor with a black bear called Bonkers.
If you think photographers are silent observers of life, travelling unnoticed through the world as they record time's passing, David Bailey and Bruce Weber may come as a bit of a surprise: their cheerful and engaging double act would give a pair of professional comedians a run for their money.
I always have a camera on my shoulder. I wouldn't think of going anywhere without a camera. Even if I go to the dentist, I take the camera
Phone companies often talk about how they bring friends together, but that claim came with a slightly different spin from Nokia. In a publicity exercise for its new Lumia 1020, the company gave Bailey and Weber the camera smartphone each and sent them out to photograph in New York's Harlem for a day. Working through one of the city's hottest summer days, the two old friends worked together to take pictures of life in the famed New York community.
The resulting photos are being shown at the Nicholls and Clarke Building in Shoreditch, London, until Saturday.
"We saw one of those things that is very typical of Harlem at this time of year," Weber says in an interview the day after the shoot, in New York's SoHo. "They opened up the fire hydrants, and all the kids were playing in the water. David dived straight in there with the kids, and he got soaking wet. I thought, 'Wow, that is pretty great'."
Weber, 67, who mainly lives in Miami, says he enjoyed walking with his long-time friend Bailey, and Bailey's wife Catherine, through a part of New York that that he knows very well - "like a property agent", as he puts it.