How Michelangelo Changed My Life BY MICHAEL DAKS
W hen I was sixteen I saw a movie on late night Television, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow up (1966), loosely based on the life of the English fashion and portrait photographer (and working-class hero), David Bailey. In the opening scenes of the film, Thomas the photographer, played as a charming but self- centered rogue by David Hemmings, is seen leaving a London Doss house (homeless shelter). He had spent the night documenting the lives of these poor souls, his camera hidden in a paper bag. He leaves the premises and walks around the corner to where he has hidden his car, a Rolls Royce convertible, and then drives back to his studio where sixties supermodel Veruschka awaits his phallic camera. Mayhem, mystery, and murder ensue—not to mention a frolicking Jane Birkin in her second film role.
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