Blood brothers

"I thought he was the most interesting of that lot [the Young British Artists], right from when I saw the shark. And then, by chance, I was walking in [Greenwich] Village, and went past Gagosian's [New York] gallery, and there was the cow, the cutup cow. It's one of those things that knocked me sideways. I thought: My God, this is something beyond my imagination. Just terrific, so original."

The origins of the new Gagosian collaboration date from the point when Bailey decided to take some pictures of Hirst's installation of the handicapped children mannequins that, in the 1950s and 1960s, stood outside shops to raise money for medical charities - "I blew them up big," says Bailey, "and Damien saw them, and we sort of seemed to have quite a lot in common, so it just came about like that."

Their joint show, Stations of the Cross, occupying the ground floor of the Gagosian, uses the traditional stages of Christ's Passion as the starting point for 13 king-size, richly saturated colour photos of large-breasted naked women, a decapitated cow, cigarette ends stubbed out on the cross, buckets of blood - that sort of thing.

Hirst contrived the imagery, Bailey composed the shots, and even those who recoil from the content might - if not shouting, or crying, or being sick - be persuaded to concede the technical flair of the shots, which match stark lighting effects with the subtlest gradations of tone.

One of the gentler images shows a kneeling Simon, in red robes, offering succour to a full-frontally naked Messiah: Jesus is played by Hirst, Simon by Bailey. "He gets the starring part, and I'm just Simple Simon. And I'm circumcised - he's not."

In the basement of the gallery there is a collection of much smaller, blackand-white images: Bailey's portraits of artists. Some of them are from the past couple of years, some are decades old, and at least two or three will be familiar to almost every visitor: a young Andy Warhol, leaning directly into the camera with his mouth slightly gaping, and an equally young David Hockney, innocently playing with his outsize, round-rimmed glasses.

Here, too, are the likes of Auerbach, Beuys ("the only heir to Duchamp") - and Hirst, goonishly bending his nose with his glasses. There is also a trio of veteran photographers, some of the greatest and Bailey's heroes: Brassai, Lartigue, Man Ray ("very grumpy"). "Lartigue was an incredible guy. In his nineties, he walked a mile a day and drank three litres of water. I'd have thought it would keep him up all night peeing ..."

The once-lissom photographer clearly has age on his mind, and lately has taken to referring to himself selfdeprecatingly as "fat and bald". "Stocky" would be a more apt term and when he finally takes off his black woollen cap towards the end of our meeting, he reveals not a glistening pate but an interestingly untamed mane of medium-long grey hair.

More than any physical attribute, though, the things that strike you are the voice (quite high, and very much the cheekychappie after all these years), the incorrigible saltiness (he effs and blinds to Olympic standard), and above all the laughter. It is frequent and endearing: when he really lets rip, his face goes purple and his eyes water.

Nothing if not digressive, Bailey veers away from the subject of his own work, and from most direct questions. When I finally chance asking him which of the two new shows is his own favourite, he is typically evasive. "Oh, I don't know. Don't ask me intellectual questions. I'm just a simple boy from the East End ..." More laughter.

But come now, Mr Bailey, asking you which one you prefer is hardly an "intellectual" question ...? "Oh it is, it really is ... I like butterflies ..." and he points across the room to Hirst's colourful plane of lepidoptera.

Bailey, it's clear, is the kind of Englishman who would sooner be accused of arson than of pretentiousness. Instead, he turns the tables and asks me a question. People, he says, are calling the Stations exhibition shocking: "Did you find it shocking?" Well, no, not at all, I have to admit, but then I'm not a Catholic.

"Nor am I, but if I was going to have any faith, I would definitely be a Catholic. Just think of it: St Peter's as your head office, and Michelangelo doing the commercials. I'd have some of that!"

And his face goes purple again as the huge Bailey laugh swells through the studio.

Fiona Maddocks is away