Valda Bailey
UK, born 1958
Valda Bailey is a freelance photographer living in Sussex, England who first became passionate about photography when she was 14. Her approach to photography is greatly informed by her background in painting and her influences come as much from artists as they do photographers.
Largely motivated by color and form, Bailey’s impressionistic photographs have a clear tension and dynamism to them as she looks to push the boundaries of what photography is about and strives to produce work that has movement and energy. Portraying an interpretation of a scene rather than a literal representation, Bailey makes her images using in-camera multiple exposure and ICM (intentional camera movement)—two techniques which help to create abstract shapes and blur extraneous detail.
Bailey has spent time in New York under the expert tutelage of noted street photographer, Jay Maisel, and has been greatly influenced by his teaching about light, color and gesture. Her work has been featured in broadsheet newspapers, as well as national and international publications. Bailey has been teaching for Light & Land Photographic Workshops run by Charlie Waite since 2015 and frequently leads photographic workshops with Sohn Fine Art in Lenox, MA.
Most recently, Bailey has exhibited throughout the United Kingdom with solo presentations of her work at MMX Gallery, The Sun Beyond the Shadow (2018) and a traveling exhibition Fragile which was on view at the Jersey Arts Centre and at Bosham Gallery (2017). Her work is consistently included in group exhibitions, including Tides + Falls at Sohn Fine Art, Lenox, MA and Vision 9, OXO Gallery, London, both in 2018.
Bailey made her US debut in 2017 in the group exhibition Into the Woods at Sohn Fine Art in Lenox, MA. In 2015, she was the first woman to be invited to join six other photographers to exhibit at the Biennial Masters of Vision at the Southwell Minster, United Kingdom. Her photography is included in corporate and private collections worldwide and her work has been purchased by notable members of the art and photographic community.
