Brandt Bill,
1904
1983, biography English
Biography
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Born in London of parents
who were both partly of Russian descent, Bill Brandt spent his early life in
Germany in delicate health. He left a Swiss tuberculosis sanitarium in 1929 to
study with the surrealist Man Ray in Paris. Brandt worked closely with Man Ray
in his studio for three months and continued to see him regularly for the next
two years. He learned the value of experiment for its own sake and was
profoundly influenced by the surrealist work of Man Ray and his circle.
After working freelance
for Paris Magazine in 1930, Brandt returned to England where he
photographed for magazines such as Lilliput, Harper's Bazaar,
and News Chronicle for which he documented the conditions of England in
the depths of the Depression. He photographed English middle- and upper-class
life both before and during World War II, publishing The English at Home
(1936), A Night in London (1938), and The Camera in London
(1948). Working as a photojournalist on assignment, his photography was a
singular and idiosyncratic mixture of straight reportage with a consistent, if
subtle, streak of strangeness - the legacy of surrealism.
Brandt lost interest in
reportage toward the end of the war, and the expressionism and surrealism of his
work was accordingly strengthened. He worked extensively with the nude, often
with both perspective and figural distortions. Also important in his work were
portraits of writers and artists, and ominous brooding landscapes and seashores
of the British Isles. Threatening skies at dawn and twilight and shadowed
interiors were characteristic subjects. Typical, too, were wide-angle,
distorting photographs, often strangely lighted and printed for high contrast
with the elimination of middle tones. Highly respected for the intensity and
power of his images, Brandt is considered one of the pre-eminent photographers
to have emerged in England. Writing of his work, which runs clearly counter to
the dominant post-war style of straight, unmanipulated photography, Brandt has
said, "Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried
and dare... photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which
counts, no matter how it is achieved
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