David Bailey and Bruce Weber record their vision of life in Harlem Bailey's version of Harlem. Photo: David Bailey and Bruce Weber for Nokia Lumia 1020 'I wasn't thinking, "Oh, this is a job for the phone,"" Weber says. I was making a record of my time up in Harlem with a pal. These pals seem like an incongruous match: Bailey, 75, the brash rebel from London's East End, overthrew the conventions of fashion photography with his gritty, high-contrast images of gamine models and the biggest film and music stars of the 1960s. Weber, 67, born and raised in rural Pennsylvania, has channelled the old-school glamour of photographers such as George Platt Lynes in making images of chiselled Adonises and lanky women. But both have put their passions into their photographs and films. They both gained early notoriety with provocative imagery that redefined what a sex symbol can be. When they met more than 30 years ago, they were drawn together by mutual admiration, both professional and personal. 'I've had lots of smart friends," Bailey says, 'and Bruce is smart, knowledgeable and curious." Asked what he likes about Bailey's photos, Weber smiles slyly. 'I'm going to say something that's going to surprise David. I think they're romantic. Bailey raises his eyebrows and looks hard at Weber. That does surprise me," he says. His curiosity about people and his respect for people is so romantic to me," Weber explains. A Bailey portrait is rarely 'so sweet or so pretty," he says, but it's always an honest portrayal of the photographer's feelings for the subject. 'That's different from making fun of someone," he notes. In Bailey's notorious 1965 portrait of the Kray twins, for example, Weber sees Bailey's curiosity and ambivalence, the reaction of 'a kid who grew up the same way as these guys, who's thinking, "Should I like these guys, or not like these guys?"" Bailey agrees that when he makes portraits, he is thinking about the story he wants to tell, not how his subjects want to be seen by the world. 'I don't care if they're happy," he says. Decades ago, he recalls, he photographed an actor who said, 'I hate this photo. This year the actor's wife called Bailey's studio to ask for a copy, 'because he thinks it's the best picture ever taken of him. Bailey quotes his artistic hero: 'When Picasso did a drawing of Gertrude Stein, she said, "I don't look like that." He said, "You will."" Weber photographed by Bailey in Harlem, NY. Romantic" is the same word Weber uses to describe the work of his mentor, Diane Arbus, whose probing images of dwarfs, giants and circus performers always provoke strong emotions in viewers. He says, 'When I think about Diane's photo of the little boy with the hand grenade in Central Park, it reminds me of myself. You know, not having too many friends, and trying anything to get attention. IN PICTURES: Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr Weber spotted Arbus in a restaurant shortly after he moved to New York in the 1960s, introduced himself, and told her he was a photographer no one would publish. She got him enrolled in a class taught by her old teacher, the photographer Lisette Model, and encouraged his work. She would sometimes call me up at five in the morning to talk about photography, which is a great and strange time to talk about it, and yet it meant the world to me. All the great photographers have had one thing in common, Weber says, 'Their pictures, no matter what they're photographing, are really portraits of themselves. Model inspired the reticent Weber to tell his story through his photos. He says, 'I think that most photographers are basically pretty shy - except for David, maybe. Model's class 'gave me a lot of courage to go out and speak the truth about my feelings, what I saw, and what I wanted to see. Bailey photographed by Weber in Harlem, NY. Since his days as a student, Weber has photographed his dogs, his friends and his favourite locations, such as the Adirondack Mountains and Rio, the subjects of two of his books. His assignments for clients have been less literally autobiographical, but they envision his wish for a life that might have been. Often the young athletes he has cast in fashion campaigns look like the cool kids everybody looked up to in high school. The carefree aristocrats and frisky teens that he depicts inhabit idyllic worlds. Designers he has worked with have often trusted him to envision their aspirations, too. Once while shooting for the designer Ralph Lauren on a farm in northern California, Weber kept photographing the landscape. The producers tried to hurry him along. 'They said, "Bruce, we have 10 people you have to photograph and they're waiting,"" Weber recalls. I said, "Yes, but this is the farm that Ralph always dreamt he would have."" Lauren, the Bronx-born designer who turned his fantasies of how the landed gentry dress into a fashion empire, chose to include several photos of his dream farm in his next campaign. Weber's longtime collaboration with Calvin Klein produced iconic images that have defined the designer's brand. Back in 1983 Weber's ad for Calvin Klein Underwear caused a sensation when it debuted, larger than life, on a Times Square billboard. The ad featured the bronzed, well-endowed body of the pole vaulter Tom Hintnaus clad only in tidy white briefs. His head is tilted back and his eyes are closed as he leans against a white pillar, with a brilliant blue sky behind him. 'People would say, "Isn't this sexy?" And I thought, Oh, I don't know if this is sexy," Weber says, his voice trailing off. Legend has it that all the New York City bus shelters where the ads were displayed were ransacked, and the posters stolen. People were writing about it, and giving me a hard time," he says. I laughed because I thought, If they only knew how those images were made. Weber's version of Harlem. The shoot took place on the rooftop of a house in Santorini, Greece. Klein ordered the set closed, leaving Hintnaus, Weber and his assistant alone. But the 12-year-old daughter of the house's owners was watching. 'I thought, I can't ask her to leave, she lives here," Weber says. 'So we'd be doing a picture and she'd say, "Get him to stand over there." I said, "You know, that's a good idea." " Thus, according to Weber, the campaign that broke new ground with its use of eroticised manliness was art directed by a 12-year-old girl. That was the fun of it," he says. READ: Bruce Weber talks What has made Weber and Bailey such successful advertising photographers and commercial directors is their ability to anticipate and inspire consumers" desire. If we want to be like the people they photograph, or to sleep with the people they photograph, we'll want to buy the clothes they wear or the perfume they endorse. Though their images are seductively appealing to many people, they have also stirred controversy. It is not a topic Weber likes to discuss. Bailey shrugs and says, 'If you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. Exactly," Weber says. Weber says he gives his young assistants the same advice Richard Avedon gave him: always shoot something for yourself, 'and don't think about what some guy in an office wants. He remembers the day he had an assignment to take Avedon's portrait. Avedon agreed to leave his studio, so they each took their cameras on to the streets of New York City. You gave me one of the pictures," Bailey says. You photographed him next to a waste bin or something. Weber remembers being impressed by the intensity with which Avedon photographed a rubbish bin, 'like he was in the studio with [model] Suzy Parker. 'That's real shooting shit," Bailey says. He and Weber laugh uproariously. Next they have to edit their images from their day in Harlem. Bailey says his wife and assistant know well how tough a critic he is when assessing his own work. 'It's like, Oh my God, I should have done better, I should have done better. It takes me a week to think, maybe it's all right. The search for perfection drives the two men to keep shooting and experimenting, whether it's looking for new subjects or trying out new imaging technology. 'I'm always looking for a new way of seeing the world," Bailey says. I just want to get better," Weber adds. An exhibition of the images, Weber X Bailey by Nokia Lumia 1020, is open today until September 21 at the Nicholls & Clarke building in Shoreditch, London E1